


Trefoil

by tolarian



Series: Trefoil [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Asgard (Marvel), Canon-Typical Violence, Complicated Relationships, Jealousy, Long Live Feedback Comment Project, M/M, Manipulation, Multi, Not Canon Compliant, Not Thor: The Dark World Compliant, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Possessive Behavior, Possessive Bucky Barnes, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, References to Norse Religion & Lore, Self-Harm, Stucky - Freeform, Thor (Marvel) is Not Stupid, Thundershield - Freeform, Trauma, WinterThunderShield, not so much a slow burn as a series of small electrical fires
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-26
Updated: 2019-03-07
Packaged: 2019-07-17 18:11:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 19
Words: 53,361
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16101035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tolarian/pseuds/tolarian
Summary: After the events of CA:TWS, Thor returns to find Steve gravely injured and The Winter Soldier is to blame.A sequel to Cap in Hand.





	1. Foolhardy and Stubborn

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Gunmetal, Thunder and Stars](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3913264) by [daphnomancy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/daphnomancy/pseuds/daphnomancy). 
  * Inspired by [A Matter of Timing](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4601127) by [Rhiw](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rhiw/pseuds/Rhiw). 



> This fic draws from canon events, reimagined in the context of an affectionate if complicated romantic relationship between Steve and Thor, (as depicted in the prequel Cap in Hand). This includes a key deviation from canon: Thor returned to New York much sooner in this continuity than in the MCU and The Avengers had more time to work as a team. Some events were mildly wacky: think Doombots, wizards, and Steve punching out dinosaurs when not making out with Thor. 
> 
> The relationship between Steve and Bucky draws from a very similar history as I Will Carry You Home in My Teeth, but the events of that story did not occur in this continuity. (In terms of tone, this story is somewhere between those two stories: it's not as dark as Carry, not as light as Cap.) In this context, events roughly analogous to Iron Man 3 and Captain America: The Winter Soldier have occurred but the events of Thor: The Dark World did not.
> 
> Eventual Winterthundershield, but, boy do we have a ways to go before we get there. 
> 
> Sincere thanks to daphnomancy and the wonderful Storms and Supernovas series for making Winterthundershield seem not only possible but awesome. (Things are WAY less functional in this story, though.)
> 
> Reference to the Vanir being healers is a hat-tip to the excellent A Matter of Timing by Rhiw.
> 
> Chapter-specific content notes to be added. Unbeta'd, so all errors are my own.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content Warnings at the end of the chapter.

He landed in the street outside the place of healing. His arrival left waves in the concrete before he sprinted into the building. The Widow met him in the atrium and nodded for him to follow her. The ride in the elevator was interminable, bathed in the artificial, white light that Midgardians favored.

“Heimdall said Steven is gravely injured."

The Widow was impassive. “He is.”

“I will remove him to Asgard immediately—”

“No.”

“ _No?_ ” he bellowed, the sound ringing off the enclosed walls. Her flinch shamed him; at a base level, it satisfied.

“You can’t move him right now,” she said quietly.  “He’s too injured.”

“Your technology is laughable. The healers of Asgard will help him.”

The elevator door opened. “This way,” she said.

The flooring cracked, once, under his boot and the lights flickered.

Her tone was as serious as the grave and nearly as warm. “That won’t help. The machines are helping keep him alive right now.”

Thor gripped Mjölnir and promised himself vengeance on whoever had caused this, in any small part. Together, they—

Steven was lying in a bed, in flimsy Midgardian cotton. His face was purple and the machines cradled him. There were tubes—clumsy, inefficient technology—in his veins and throat.

He had cut his hair while Thor was away.

“Who did this?” Thor demanded. So close to this wretched machinery, he had to contain himself. For now. Mjölnir would aid him, and they would store their strength for laying waste to those responsible.

“We’re not sure,” said a man, sitting by Steven’s bedside. There was music playing—pleasant nonsense that seemed to mock Steven’s vulnerability.

“Who are you?” He stared at the stranger.

“Sam Wilson,” he said calmly. “Friend of Steve’s. You must be Thor.”

“I am.” He stared down at Steven’s body. His beloved had been badly beaten—by what incredible force? Why had their fellow warriors allowed this? The Widow bore few injuries that he could see; the man in the chair had a warrior’s stillness but he too seemed largely uninjured. 

“There’s a lot we need to tell you.” The Widow's voice was carefully neutral. “I need your assurance that you won’t run off half-cocked before you have all the information.”

“My assurances?” Thor stared at the small woman, straightening to his full height. _What is a promise to an ant?_ asked the rage in his chest.

“He won’t go anywhere,” Wilson said calmly. “Not when Steve needs him here, am I right?” He watched Thor bristle; his own expression was mild.

He narrowed his eyes at the man. “You are attempting to manipulate me,” he growled. There had been enough whispers in his ears for a lifetime.

Wilson shook his head, spreading his hands in a gesture of peace. “Nah, man. Just telling you how it is. Steve needs you here. I imagine you’re pretty mad you weren’t here when this happened, though. It’d be easy to run off, yeah, and not have to be here when he wakes up.”

Lightning struck a streetlamp outside.

“Harder to stay here,” Wilson added, unmoved, and re-opened the paperback in his lap. He ignored Thor and the now-flaming streetlight outside.

“When can he be safely moved to Asgard?” Thor regarded the Widow.

“We’ve never seen him so badly injured,” she said. “The safest thing to do is to keep him here.” She watched him grip Mjölnir and for once his weapon was of no use: a hammer could build but not heal. “Can you bring your healers here?”

Thor’s eyes burned. “I will have it done,” he said.

 

* * *

 

The next day, three Vanir crowded around Steven’s bedside, talking amongst themselves and eyeing the machines around Steven’s bed with distaste. His new acquaintance’s chair had been pushed to the edge of the room. Thor stood beside him.

“I have not met you before,” he said quietly.

“I met Steve after he moved to D.C.,” the man explained. “We were out running. He’s a funny guy, Steve.”

Thor frowned. “When did he relocate here? Why?”

Wilson watched him for a moment. “You’ve been away for a while.”

“Yes,” Thor choked on the admission, looking past the murmuring Vanir. Steven was pale under the terrible bruising. Thor struggled to restrain himself; the weak currents in the machines around Steven were so easy to rouse, casings so easy to crack.

His lack of discipline could finish the work the assassins had begun.

“If he thought he needed you here, he would've contacted you.”

“He is foolhardy and stubborn,” Thor replied savagely.

“Hey, no argument here.”

“Where does he reside now?” Thor asked. He had spent the night on the floor of Steven’s room and would do so again. Yet he was curious about this place where Steven had been living, outside of the Tower where he had lived among their team-mates. Perhaps once he was well enough, Thor would take him there to retrieve any important possessions, before he took him to Asgard. The other Midgardians had proved unable to protect Steven.

He should not have left him among them.

“I’ll get you the address,” Wilson said. “It might be a little messy.”

 

* * *

 

“We think Steve was attacked by the Winter Soldier when the helicarriers came down. He was found by the river. We’re still looking for the shield.” the Widow reported. Her tone was efficient, but her eyes lingered on Steven. “Steve believed— _believes_ —that the Winter Soldier is his friend Bucky Barnes.” She colored at the correction, but her breathing was steady.

“Barnes,” Thor said, watching the bruises fade on Steven’s face. What technology had been brought with the Vanir healers was effective, if slower than the tools that could not be safely transported. They could heal much of the damage without overly taxing Steven’s body in other ways, though the remainder of the healing would have to rely on his serum and substantial caloric intake.

“The one lost in the mountains.” Steven’s first lover had done this.

“Even if Steve is right, then whoever Barnes was before, now he’s a legendary HYDRA assassin with, as far as we know, standing orders to kill Steve.”

“Steven will not allow him to be killed, so long as he believes this,” Thor replied.

“It doesn’t have to be his call.” The Widow posed the idea carefully.

Thor considered this. It was not the honorable path, but it had the undeniable merits of simplicity and ensuring that Barnes could not injure him again. He watched Steven breathe, unaided by the machines. He frowned in his sleep.

“It must be his decision,” he said, though he could hear his brother’s voice just behind his ear, calling him a fool.

Her expression did not change, but he suspected she would have shared Loki’s sentiment. She adjusted the fall of a blanket, drawing it further up Steven’s chest.

“Then it will be,” she agreed. She smoothed the line of the blanket and withdrew her hands. He wondered if she was lying. She was inscrutable, but it was her kind that had done this: she would know how to find Barnes.

“The healers expect him to wake sometime tomorrow.” Thor clenched his fingers against the mad desire to adjust the blanket, reluctant to let the Widow's touch be the most recent on Steven's sleeping form. “I will remain here.”

“Tony said he’d send you some of what you left in the tower,” the Widow said. “Apparently it’s mostly pajamas.”

“A change of clothing would be pleasant indeed.”

 

* * *

 

Steven awoke briefly just before sunrise. Wilson slept in the chair, shivering awake at the sound of movement in the bed. Thor leaned over, caught between giving his lover space to breathe and the urge to crush him against his armor. Pre-dawn light reflected in eyes that were an ocean.

“Thor?” Steven blinked. His voice was hoarse, bewildered. “How do you know Sam?”

“Mutual friends,” the man said dryly. “Nice to see you awake.”

“Where am I?” Steven tried to sit up, but Thor pressed gently down on his shoulder. “You are in a place of healing, in your Washington, D.C.”

“Where’s Bucky?”

Thor and Wilson exchanged glances.

“We are unsure,” Thor said carefully. “You remain convinced this assassin is your shield-brother?”

Steven nodded, then winced. “I remember falling off the helicarrier,” he said, eyes going distant. “Then, the shore. It’s him, I know it’s him. He knew me.” Steven grimaced. “Sort of.”

“He injured you severely.”

Steven shrugged. “It’s not so bad. I’m fine-”

“You were nearly dead,” Wilson interrupted. “When they found you, you were—” he took a deep breath. “The only reason you aren’t still on a ventilator, even with your serum, is the magical whatsits your boyfriend brought. And even his doctors weren’t sure you’d make it.”

Steven stared at Thor. “Your doctors?”

“Several healers were brought from Vanaheim to oversee your care,” Thor replied. “It was a very close thing, Steven.”

“What about SHIELD?”

Thor had no answer; the Widow had mentioned SHIELD earlier, but his attention had been on the fragile pulse in Steven’s throat.

“In pieces, apparently,” Wilson supplied. “I’m told that some of the good guys are trying to get their house in order, but I can’t imagine that going too smoothly.”

“Natasha?”

“She is well. Concerned about you,” Thor studied the details of Mjölnir’s grip. “You soften her remarkably.”

“Sure I do,” Steven grunted and leaned back against the bed. “I need to find him.”

Thor stiffened, ready to argue until he saw Steven’s eyes flutter and close.

“Congrats on keeping him in the bed. I thought we’d have to tackle him halfway down the hallway by now. Stubborn bastard.”

“Tell me everything you saw of this assassin,” Thor said, his voice strange and thick to his ears.

 

* * *

 

 The operation had started off tactically unsound and now it was insanity. He had observed the hospital room three times since they had taken the Captain there; he had only intended to monitor the Captain’s status, but the first visit had seen him slip into the room while the Winged Man slept in the chair beside the bed. The Captain had been gravely injured but stable. The Soldier had been able to touch the bruised face and confirm the suspicion that he was too injured to extract.

By the second visit, the operation had completely gone to hell. The Alien was in the Captain’s room and engaging it was suicide. It was as bad as having the Hulk in play; what the Alien lacked in sheer aggression, it made up with intelligence, with its ability to summon lightning. It wasn't a god, but it might as well have been, for how high above his capabilities it was.

He had accessed footage of the Battle of New York in his most recent safehouse, which he studied for insight into the Captain’s team. At least the Hulk would shrink after a battle and the skinny remains would sleep. The Alien had no such downtime: it just stayed by the Captain’s bedside. None of this would have been quite so frustrating if the Alien hadn’t touched the Captain. But it did—it stroked the Captain’s hair incessantly, patted his arm with a fierce possessiveness.

The Alien had to be neutralized, except that was impossible. The second option was to wait it out: the Alien hadn’t been seen for over a year, according to news sources. It might leave again for another long absence. But would it take the Captain with it when it left? That couldn’t be allowed.

On the third visit, he watched from his perch and could see that the Captain had healed rapidly. Even given his enhancements, it was incredible. Presumably, the Alien’s doing: it was the biggest unknown factor. This accelerated the timetable significantly. The Alien could take him any time.

Anyone could take the Captain—anyone who took the first opportunity. He considered and discarded a number of plans. Eventually, he decided the best course of action was to blow up several public buildings and retrieve the Captain while his team-mates were away dealing with the chaos.

He was unsure why he didn’t proceed with this plan. The likeliest explanation was a change in his drug regimen: he’d tried to approximate it, but he could tell he wasn’t operating optimally. In the end, he triggered a HYDRA fail-safe and blew up a base just outside the city. Before triggering the explosion, he had activated an in-progress research project on attack drones: the actual casualties would be negligible, aside from the base staff. Destroying the base was mildly annoying—he never liked to waste resources, even resources that wanted to kill him—but a disaster that ultimately revealed HYDRA connections would be irresistible to these people. 

He estimated that even with SHIELD’s current organizational chaos, the Widow, the Alien, and the Winged Man—even without his wings, his training and obvious affection for the Captain should lead to his involvement—would respond quickly. Given their near-constant presence by the Captain’s side, he had to gamble that they hadn’t monitored the room by other means already.

The Soldier made himself presentable and stole the necessary equipment. He came into the Captain’s room under the guise of taking him for a test. He was already unconscious and hooked up to an IV; it would be simple enough to sedate him and move him. Once they were out of the hospital, the rest would be easy.

Except for the unknown factor. He had hesitated, upon seeing the Captain and just as he was preparing the sedative, the Alien returned. His calculations must have been egregiously off, he thought, as the Alien roared with rage and threw the hammer. It crashed through the window, offering an immediate means of escape if he could avoid the weapon’s return flight: he’d seen that trick in the footage.

He would have made it if the Captain hadn’t croaked from the bed, “Bucky?”

He froze, and the Alien tackled him to the floor, bellowing. Dully, he realized its fingers were compressing the metal shoulder as the other hand, wide as a shovel, struck his face. Every time the hand fell something broke, something gave.

The thought was strangely calm as the Alien seized his throat: all in all, it was the most dramatic failure of his career, even including the helicarrier incident. The Captain hadn’t been awake for the end of that one and apparently, that made the difference. He could hear the Captain shouting, and the whistle of the hammer returning, as the Alien throttled him, and everything faded out. His last impression was of the inhuman perfection of the Alien’s bared teeth—white, white, white.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content Warnings:  
> \- Steve is badly injured; references are made to ventilators and IVs, other hospital equipment  
> \- Thor struggles with guilt and anger; he is aggressive with Sam and Natasha  
> \- Bucky remains under the influence of HYDRA torture and brainwashing  
> \- Bucky considers different acts of what amount to terrorism, attempts to kidnap Steve. He plans on introducing sedatives into Steve's IV.  
> \- Thor attacks Bucky and strangles him to the point of unconsciousness


	2. Trying to Make Contact

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Avengers and Bucky go to the Tower and begin dealing with the fallout from the struggle in the hospital room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We start to get a little more insight into Bucky's motivations this week!
> 
> Content Warnings at end of the chapter. Thanks for reading!

Steve should have figured there would be more quinjets squirreled away. Bucky couldn’t have trashed all of them.  Given how his last trip on a SHIELD aircraft had gone, he would have declined, but they had Bucky sedated in the back. Natasha had made an executive decision to detain him in the Tower, away from SHIELD’s remaining influence, even as she cheerfully stole their equipment.

She hadn’t had to actually voice the truth that Steve and his capacity for decision-making were hopelessly compromised.

He had nodded to Clint when he got on the plane. He watched Bucky, who Thor had beaten senseless before Steve had fallen off the bed onto the two of them. He had just managed to throw himself between them as Thor caught Mjölnir and raised it high above his head.

Steve didn’t remember what he’d said, exactly—he had begged and cried, he knew that—but at least Thor had listened. Everything else was a blur, except for Natasha’s occasional, steadying narration and Sam's promise to call. Thor sat near the back of the quinjet and Steve focused on staying conscious. He had aggravated some of his remaining injuries breaking up the fight—although calling it a fight was stupid because it had been just one blow shy of being a slaughter—and he felt nauseated as they took off.

Bucky had known him on the helicarrier. Bucky had come back. Bucky was a few feet away, covered in bruises.

Thor was further away; they hadn’t spoken since Thor had slowly let go of Bucky’s throat.

Natasha placed a gloved hand on his arm.

“We’ll sort it out,” she said. “Just sleep.”   

He didn’t dream.

* * *

Thor sat on the roof of the Tower. Some floors below, Barnes was being restrained and healed. Between the Vanir healers no longer being on Midgard and Thor’s disinclination to call them back, the assassin’s healing would take some time even with his enhancements. It seemed fitting: Steven was out of his hospital bed, even after earning some new bruises, but the assassin was the one lying abed now, skin vivid with injuries. Steven was probably still hovering over him, however, even as he required his own care.

An extended convalescence for Barnes would only prolong that.

Thor grunted and cursed that he had let his surprise at seeing the intruder impact his aim. The thought made Mjölnir heavier in his hand for a moment.

“And here I thought we weren’t going to kill him,” the Widow said primly. She had materialized somewhere behind his shoulder. The door to the stairwell was quite loud and he had not heard it, which made perfect sense given her methods of waging war.

Thor stared out at the city. Storm clouds threatened the horizon: great grey banks hung in the sky, drawn to his ill mood.

“You know, if you’d just told me that you’d changed your mind, you and Steve could be canoodling in a shot-up apartment in D.C. right now.”

“Canoodling,” he said levelly.

“It seemed like your flavor of vocabulary.”

The Widow sat across from him, putting herself between him and the low sun. The effect on her hair was stunning, and it left much of her face in sudden shade before his eyes adjusted. The light hid and then revealed her, but she clearly knew that.

“Steven wanted to locate Barnes,” Thor said, feeling the uneven pressures in the clouds. To strike would balance them, but only temporarily.

“And now he has,” she responded. “We need to determine whether he’s still following the kill order.”

“And if he is not?”

“You ever read the Captain America comics?” Her smile was sudden, wicked and then gone as if it had never been.

“It will be very pleasant for Steven to have his shield brother back, I am sure.”

The Widow watched him. “I still think he should be neutralized,” she said calmly. “But the optimal window for that seems to have passed. Good try, though. It’s a pity Steve woke up when he did.”

_Steven, crouching around the assassin, begging for his life. Mjölnir high in his hand, ready to come down._

“I did **not** intend to-” he found himself bellowing and swallowed the rest like poison.

“And now I believe you,” she said and left him on the roof.

Thor remained where he was. There was no rush to return to his suite of rooms. Steven would not be there. He was otherwise occupied.

* * *

Bucky was restrained to the bed. It looked disconcertingly normal, aside from the handcuffs, but Steve knew everything had to be reinforced. Natasha never would have let him in the room, otherwise, even after the rounds of interrogation had seemed to confirm Bucky had been trying to make contact with Steve and not kill him. At least, not immediately.

Bucky was staring at him. There were still so many bruises: swipes of purple on Bucky's neck, a crooked red mask on his face.

“Hi,” Steve said.

Bucky’s stare went hard.

“Do you know who I am?”

Bucky looked down. He shrugged with one shoulder; the flesh one. Thor had damaged the other shoulder and the arm rested limply on the bed. As far as they could tell it wasn’t causing Bucky any pain, but that didn’t guarantee it wasn’t hurting him. Natasha didn’t trust Bucky enough to have it fixed and Steve wouldn’t allow it to be removed without being replaced.

Steve nodded. He cleared his throat and, limping slightly, settled on the chair near the foot of the bed. It was bolted down. “Can I tell you about a few things?”

Confusion cracked in eyes that had been flat concrete, before. Steve had spent the last few first days resting in, then pacing around his rooms, debating what to say to Bucky. He’d wanted to tell him who he was, see if anything sparked his memory, but according to the files Natasha had accessed, Bucky had had people telling who or what he was for a very long time. And he had been asked a lot of questions, more recently. What did that leave?

“My name is Steve Rogers,” he said quietly. “I was born in 1918. I used to be little, real little. Skinny, asthma, all that. My mother’s name was Sarah. She was a nurse. I draw, some. Can I show you a few pictures?”

The confusion on Bucky’s swollen face was, if anything, more pronounced. Steve held up a sketchbook, opening it to a drawing of his mother at the age she’d been when he and Bucky met. She was already tired, even then: her bones were prominent beneath her face, beautiful but barely hidden by her skin.  He’d drawn her the first night back in the Tower when Thor didn’t come to see him. The rest he’d drawn in the days and nights since, in the too-large apartment, when he hadn't been trading texts with Sam.

“This is her. This, uh, little bottle of rosewater in her hands, she had it for years. She used to put it behind her ears on special occasions.”

He coughed, wondering if Bucky would say something – even something rude, something that pointed out the godawful strangeness of showing sketches of your ma to a man who was tied up, who didn’t know you. He flipped to another page with a sketch of a Brooklyn tenement building, long demolished. “I lived here for a few years before the war. The stairwell always smelled like cat piss, but it had a good view out the bedroom.” _Our bedroom_ , he didn't say. He flipped to another page – Coney Island, like it was once. There were about a dozen sketches, most of them landmarks, a few acquaintances, all pre-war and he had a quiet explanation for each one. Bucky listened with his head cocked to the side, like he was straining to hear a far-off sound.

Steve closed the sketchbook. “I know they already asked,” he said. “But would you tell me why you came to the hospital?”

“The view wasn’t that great,” Bucky said, then he blinked. He looked angry suddenly, mulishly frustrated, and then the expression was gone.

“The apartment?” Steve asked. “You mean the apartment?”

“I don’t know,” Bucky said, and his gaze drifted to the ceiling and stayed there.

* * *

The Captain had been re-injured in the struggle with the Alien. He’d found that out quickly during the interrogations; though they hardly deserved the name. He knew the redhead could have used far more painful tactics, but she had just sat quietly and waited, at first.

She wasn’t HYDRA. More accurately, she hadn’t known she was HYDRA. That, along with her history, suggested that she wouldn’t use any tactics the rest of the team would disapprove of, or at least that she wouldn’t let them discover. That meant he had time, which made his quick descent into asking stupid, revealing questions all the more galling.

“Is he hurt?”

“Who?”

A muscle in his cheek twitched. “The Captain.”

“Lots of Captains in D.C.”

He sighed. Why not let all protocol go slack? He couldn’t be trusted to blow up a measly run of buildings when it was clearly the correct course of action, which had got him here. He couldn’t anticipate the Alien’s behavior. What new and interesting errors would turn up next?

“The one from the hospital,” he said calmly. _And we’re not in D.C.,_ he didn’t add, because making errors was one thing; making her laugh at his stupidity was another.

“He hurt himself falling out of the bed, but he’ll heal.”

“Can I see him?”

Her expression really was a marvel. She respected him enough not to plant false micro-expressions. She let him see that she could simply choose to not produce any at all if she pleased. This suggested that a dearth of expressions was more useful to her than making any. Perhaps she and the Captain were lovers, given her behavior so far. The Alien hadn’t seemed jealous, but there were too many factors to account for that could explain that. Somewhere in the back of his mind was a fact: the Captain sometimes had more than one lover at a time- _soft brown hair against his face, floral perfume_ -which made perfect sense. There would be many individuals interested in forming a relationship with the Captain: any current lovers would be a barrier to extraction.

“We need to determine whether or not you're still trying to kill him. If not, you can see him.”

He hadn’t seen the Alien. Perhaps it wasn’t in a decision-making role. Was the Captain? He should be, but he was injured, and the redhead was a professional in a way the Captain was not— _had never been_ , a stray thought insisted, coming from nowhere.

“How will you determine that?”

“I’m still deciding,” she said, which was a lie.

“I’ve had multiple opportunities to kill him,” he said.

“Identify them.”

He decided to tell the truth. It might be the fastest way to access The Captain. Extraction might still be possible if he was patient.

“I’ve had a sight-line four times since the helicarrier. I entered the room after the first time. You may have noticed he is still alive.”

Sarcasm was unhelpful. It might antagonize her.

“I can tell you where I could have taken the shot from,” he continued, reining in his tone.

“Do that,” she said blandly, so he did.

There were other interrogations, all flavored with a kind of professional courtesy. The Captain didn’t appear until he did, and then it became clear that it wasn’t just withdrawal making him stupid. The Captain was.

While the Captain was there, the Soldier's critical thinking shut down.  Everything fogged, except the Captain and his uneven beauty, which was rendered in overwhelming detail. The graphite sheen on the edge of one thick palm. The flat plane on the bridge of his nose, which was objectively a flaw, but in practice only highlighted the mathematical precision of his other features.  The unnerving kindness in his eyes, the hunger hiding behind it.

After the visit ended, he could finally think: he reviewed what had happened. The Captain’s—Steve Rogers, he’d _known_ that, but using the name made the inside of his skull itch—strange gentleness stood out. He didn’t even use the name that had kept the Soldier from jumping out the window, had made him hesitate under the bridge. How odd that the Captain should be so shy when his presence was a sledgehammer.

After he was gone, the circuitous hints of his sketches and his deep, soft voice were almost embarrassing. The Smithsonian exhibit had told the Soldier more; the files he’d accessed later had provided excruciating detail. It would have been wise to play along, to respond haltingly with details from his research. That would have been the best course of action and it would have smoothed the line between the Captain’s brows.

But his head was full of fog as long as the Captain was in the room and then he’d said something stupid and he’d shut down. He was glad he hadn’t been in a position to play along; now the prospect itched like the Captain’s name.

The situation would improve if he could just extract the Captain. But to do that he would need to heal and gain his trust. And deal with the Alien, which was probably still nearby.

Luckily, the Captain seemed like just the kind of soft touch that the Soldier’s humiliating stupidity whenever the man was present might even prove useful.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content Warnings:  
> \- Bucky heals from severe injuries, including being strangled by Thor  
> \- Steve retains some injuries from the helicarrier, aggravated by getting between Bucky and Thor  
> \- Thor struggles with guilt, anger, and jealousy  
> \- Bucky is being held captive by the Avengers  
> \- Bucky's forced use of drugs under HYDRA's influence gets referenced  
> \- Bucky remains confused; Steve's close proximity appears to make it worse


	3. Delayed Onset

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steven and Thor talk; the Soldier's plans encounter some impediments.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's some plot happening here. Wild! Thanks for reading! Please consider commenting.
> 
> Content Notes at the end of the chapter.

There was a knock on Steve’s door. He walked to answer it with only a small hitch on his stride. Time and a seemingly endless supply of protein shakes were helping the healing along. Honestly, eating was getting boring. He missed eating with Thor; his appetite was never a joke with Thor, or if it was, it was a shared one.

“Captain Rogers, I can open the door for you—” JARVIS offered.

“Already there, JARVIS, thanks,” he said and opened the door to see Thor. He held up Steven’s shield in a posture that was only slightly defensive. He made it look delicate, like when Steve held a teacup.

“The Widow delivered this to my rooms,” Thor explained.

Steve wondered what the exact messages were that Natasha’s delivery was intended to send to each of them. He imagined two notes in perfect penmanship, each starting “Dear idiot…”

“Come in,” he said and walked into his living room. Apparently, Tony had tired of his joke of a decorating scheme—or more likely, Pepper had intervened—and the garish furniture he’d gotten used to had been replaced with subdued woodgrains and leathers. He stepped carefully, trying to mask the suggestion of a limp. “Can I get you anything?”

“Ale,” Thor said seriously. Steve could hear him lay the shield carefully on the coffee table and sit in an arm-chair.

Steve brought out a six-pack of bottles, which was about as close as he could get to asking Thor not to rush out now that the shield was delivered.

“How’ve you been?” Steve asked, opening a bottle as he sat on the couch.

“I should have come earlier—” Thor began and then fell silent. He opened a bottle and drank it. All of it. Steve watched the muscles in Thor’s throat force it down. He opened a second bottle by thumbing the cap with such force it bounced off a bookshelf.

Maybe Thor felt like they had to finish the pack before he could leave and was in a hurry.

There was a sour edge to the smell of his sweat. Steve tried not to wrinkle his nose. It was weird to dislike something about Thor’s smell. He had imagined shoving his face in between Thor's neck and shoulder when—if—he came back. The acidity made those daydreams seem small and foolish.

“I’m happy to see you,” Steve said quietly.

Thor smiled at the words, but his expression went grave. “I apologize for my actions at the hospital,” he said to the bottle in his hand, addressing it formally. “I injured you. And your shield-brother.”

“I’m fine. As for Bucky, well, he has bigger concerns,” Steve said, ignoring the bruised bone in his forearm. The initial mark on the skin had been like Thor’s hand was covered in purple ink. He had looked at the bruise that first night in the Tower, angling his hand to try to cover it with his fingers. It was fading, now and the bone was healing just fine. “Um. Could you come sit here?” He gestured to the space beside him on the couch.

“I—” Thor began. He didn’t move. He stared at Steve's arm.

Steve's face burned. He looked at the floor and sipped his beer.

“I was unsure whether you would desire my presence, much less my close proximity.”

“Why?”

Thor was silent for a moment. “I was absent for much longer than I promised. You left the halls of our compatriots, the city of your birth. And then—” he finished the second bottle with a gulp, then belched hugely. He covered his mouth with a hand; it had been some time since he had been in the presence of Steven’s decorum.

Steve smiled, despite himself. “Another?”

“Another,” Thor agreed, almost demure.

Steve passed him a third beer. “I didn’t leave, not permanently,” he said, not denying that Thor’s extended absence had hurt, had made leaving easier. “Things had been quiet here and they said I could do some good in D.C. Bet you heard how well that went.”

“You unmasked a great conspiracy,” Thor said, torn between relief and regret that Steven had not invited him to come closer to him again.

“Funny how people tend not to thank you for that,” Steve said. “Punching out a T-Rex makes for much better PR than, well, I guess a lot of it amounted to littering.” He jerked his head in the direction of the shield. “Glad someone picked that up.”

Silence settled over the room. Thor finished another beer.

“You know,” Steve said, “You don’t have to stay if you don’t want to.” His eyes flickered to Thor’s knees, then the floor. His chest hurt as Thor hastily pushed himself out of the chair.

Thor sat heavily on the couch beside Steven. Their thighs pressed together: this couch was smaller than the last one. Steven’s skin was hot, even past two layers of fabric. The heat of a forge, the obstinacy of an anvil. His Steven, he thought, but he steeled himself to say words he abhorred, though they were nonetheless true.

“You are not beholden to me,” Thor said quietly, “I understand that your shield-brother’s return may necessitate a change in our relationship.”

“A change in our…” Steven began. “Thor, no. Well, I mean.” He put his nearly-untouched beer down on the table. “You _know_ how I feel about you,” he insisted stubbornly.

Thor braced himself. “Nevertheless, I should—”

“I don’t _want_ that,” Steven said, flushed. He so rarely used that word with reference to himself. While Steven had many wants—they lit his eyes, they flavored his sweat—he rarely voiced any directly that were not battlefield orders. Thor had liked to tease him about it, once.

“What do you want?” No teasing this time.

Steven rearranged the empty bottles on the table into a line.

“I don’t know,” he said as if the words surprised him.

Thor nodded. “You still love Barnes,” he said. The words were not bitter. They, like the ale, were strangely tasteless in his mouth.

Steven colored. “I—well. Yes, but it can’t be like that. He’s ill. All that time I was under the ice, he was being tortured. And _I love you_ —”

He could not be distracted by the words, precious and rare as they were. “What if he was well?”

“He’s never going to be well.”

And that was, in its way, an answer. A man could want conflicting things. Thor had resolved to do the honorable thing and assure Steven that he would not get in the way of Barnes’ return to him. He had planned to insist.

“My mother knows how to heal wounds of the mind,” Thor offered. “Asgard’s aid is not contingent on your remaining my lover.” He held up a hand as Steven started to sputter. “I merely wish to make that clear.”

His resolution had little strength in the face of Steven’s uncertainty. It would be so easy to reach out and reclaim him, lick him open and tumble him, blushing furiously, against the wooden floor.

“Can I—” Steven’s voice grew shy. “Can I give you a hug, please?” His voice broke on the plea, as it had on the floor of his hospital room.

Thor embraced him chastely: even so, the solidity of Steven in his arms was a panacea for a wound he had not realized he had borne. One that had started to fester since he had seen the extent of Steven’s injuries, since he had entered the room to see Barnes standing over him.

It would heal, whatever came next.

* * *

“Where do you want to stay?” the Captain asked. “While you adjust to things, I mean.”

The Soldier tilted his head. Everything ran so slowly with the Captain there: he felt grossly stupid, or at least he would later, recalling the conversation and struggling to parse it beyond how the Captain’s lips had moved, how his eyes reflected the light.

This had been much easier through a scope.

“With you,” he said, unsure how long it had been since the question had been asked. He was relieved that the sessions with the medical staff weren’t like this.

The Captain nodded. There was tension in his lips and it was overwhelming. Fragmented thoughts intruded— _the smell of pine and gasoline, a woman’s voice rich with intrigue, the shape of the Captain’s lips against his ear_. He blinked and shook his head, trying to clear the mess away.

He knew the way he should speak to the Captain, but the voice stalled behind his teeth. He would start practicing with the medical staff.

“You okay?”

He laughed, and that was the answer.

“I’ll make it happen,” the Captain promised and the sight of his broad back as he turned made synaesthetic chaos in the Soldier’s head.

* * *

Natasha objected, which was exactly what he had expected.

“We can’t keep him in that room forever,” he said firmly.

“We are not reduced to choosing between keeping him as he is and putting him on your couch."

“We could give Rich Allen there to SHIELD’s picked-over carcass and let them figure out whose couch he’s going to be occupying,” Tony suggested. “Maybe we should talk to Rhodey? Or Swayze can try to kill him again. I bet he doesn’t often get that wrong twice in a row.”

Thor’s face was grim, listening to the conversation and Stark’s comment had not improved the ache in his broad shoulders. Time spent without his armor or honest battle gave the man's humor a bitter edge.

Steve decided to bite. He ignored Tony and looked to Natasha. “What do we need before we can let him have restricted access to my floor?”

“Shock collar?” Clint suggested.

“I can have one ready in fifteen minutes and give JARVIS remote access to zap J. Walter Weatherman if he tackles Old Glory,” Tony said.

Bruce sipped his tea.

“Natasha?” Steve prompted.

“I would want him cleared by a slate of psychologists and a deprogrammer, _and_ down one arm before I would consider leaving him alone with you without restraints,” Natasha said. “And I am tempted by the shock collar. But SHIELD’s resources are compromised and I’m not sure that the benefits of bringing in anyone new to observe the Winter Soldier outweigh the risk of exposing him to potential triggers or HYDRA agents.”

“Ten minutes if you start the clock after I’ve had a coffee,” Tony amended.

Steve took a deep breath. “Tony, I understand that your offer comes from a desire to help, but no. Natasha, what are our chances of finding qualified experts that aren’t HYDRA? How much can the in-house team do?”

She frowned. “I’ll do my best to find out,” she said.

Steve looked at her evenly. “I know that your best is _the_ best. But I want a timeline and I want to be updated. And I want him out of the restraints if he’s in a secured area.”

“You know, I’m just going to start putting down some ideas,” Tony said, calling up a transparent workspace with a gesture. He sketched in the air.

Natasha pressed her lips together, but she nodded.

“Excuse me,” JARVIS said smoothly, “but Sergeant Barnes appears to be having some kind of seizure. Our medical team is responding, but they will require appropriate aid if he needs to be moved.”

Steve had hurtled for the door at the word ‘Sergeant’. Thor followed, with Natasha and Clint behind him. Tony continued to draft while Bruce poured more tea.

* * *

He felt the absence of the restraints before he woke, even before the pain. He sat up and saw the Captain. The pain doubled. He covered his eyes, trying to stay awake, stay aware.

“Leave,” he said, his voice dull. He had to be louder. “Get him out,” he shouted at the Alien, at the staff around the bed.

“Wait, I—” the Captain protested.

“ _Steve, get out_ ,” he yelled brokenly, arms tightening over his head. The needle from the IV was digging into the crook of his elbow.

He felt his mind sharpen significantly and the pain dull slightly after the door closed. The staff busied themselves. The Alien was looking at him, its massive arms folded forbiddingly over its chest. The effect contrasted with its tight t-shirt and patterned pajama bottoms. Little white stars on blue, tight in the waist and hips.

The hammer matched the threat in its posture perfectly, however.

The soldier lay back in the bed, flattening his arms. He slowed his breathing. He could think. If he could think, he could plan, if his head would just hurt a little less.

“Why did you tell him to leave?” the Alien demanded. There was a hint of the bellow from when it had thrown the hammer, despite its courtly enunciation.

It looked human, but it wasn’t. It made him and the Captain look normal by comparison.

“When he’s there, my head…” he went silent, working his jaw. He looked at the Alien. It defaulted to formality; irreverence would annoy it. “Who the fuck are you, anyway?”

The Alien was fighting to keep its facial expression calm; the effort only made it tenser. There were people in this building who experts at deception, but this one? This one was all signals and sincerity. And a dumb-looking beard.

His head was hurting less. He could think. The Alien had to be separated from the Captain.

“I am Thor of Asgard,” it said finally, trying to make a growl courteous.

“That’s the funniest fucking thing I ever heard,” he said as a doctor gestured for him to submit to testing. The laughter was hoarse, but it certainly sounded real.

* * *

“Okay, recap,” Tony said, rotating a transparent schematic. “Murderbot freaked out because of Cap?”

Thor reddened at the memory. There were two of Barnes, it seemed: the one that trembled at the sight of Steven and the one that crept out in his absence, with a laugh like a razor. “He became upset and demanded that Steven leave. He called him by name.”

Steven nodded, arms folded. He abraded his lower lip with his teeth.

“Did it seem like he was going to attack him?” Barton asked.

Thor considered the image of Barnes hiding in the uneasy shelter of his arms.

“No,” he said begrudgingly.

The Widow’s expression was skeptical. “Did he say anything else?”

“He said something about Steven’s presence. It appears to affect him.”

“JARVIS, does Barnes act differently with Steve in the room? And if so, is that just surface behavior or does it go all the way down?” Banner asked.

“According to my records, Sergeant Barnes’ exhibits typical signs of arousal in Captain Rogers’ presence, including elevated heart rate and dilated pupils. However, there are some unusual contraindications that suggest the level of arousal far exceeds optimal parameters, negatively impacting his information processing and memory. Sergeant Barnes’ response time to any stimuli is significantly lengthened in Captain Rogers’ presence. His spoken vocabulary is substantially reduced. Further information would require additional equipment being active during Captain Rogers’ visits.”

“Aw, Cap, he's got a crush on you. You know, you have the same effect on me?”

“He could be faking it,” the Widow said. “Or it could be a reaction to not following orders to kill Steve. Recently.”

JARVIS added, with a thoughtful tone, “The negative impact on behavior could be falsified and several of the effects on his nervous system could be induced artificially. However, given what I have observed of Sergeant Barnes, I believe his reactions are genuine, though admittedly affected by his withdrawal from several psychotropic medications and other substances. I would also suggest that Sergeant Barnes was afraid that Captain Rogers’ presence would set off another seizure.”

Steven made a small sound of distress.

“That settles the couch question,” the Widow observed.

Steven gripped the conference table. Thor’s hesitation before touching his shoulder was sick with cowardice. Steven’s grip slackened slightly, and he returned Thor’s gaze with a complex gratitude.

Banner thumbed the surface of a tablet. “The medical team says his brain shows signs of trauma. There are some lesions, which would require extensive or repeated injury to last, given his healing abilities. Or both,” he said.

The Widow spoke calmly, her eyes on Steve. “The files we’ve been able to access indicate they were using electric shocks to impair his memory. Assuming he hasn’t made contact with them for another wipe since the helicarriers came down, his brain has probably made some progress healing. It may help explain the delayed onset of the seizures.”

“So, is Steve making that worse or better?” Barton asked.

Banner’s smile was mirthless. “That’s a very interesting question,” he said.

Steven slept in Thor’s bed that night, shaking himself awake at odd intervals. Once, Thor heard his beloved begging for Barnes’ life to an unseen enemy who was, simultaneously, the man in whose arms he lay.  

Steven did not see Barnes again for two weeks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content Notes:  
> \- Steve and Thor drink alcohol, though not to excess  
> \- Thor imagines having sex with Steve; the thought is short and not explicit  
> \- The Soldier experiences severe headaches and confusion from Steve's proximity  
> \- Some profanity (this will increase in the story as the Soldier uses more of what he thinks of as "the Bucky voice"  
> \- The Soldier has a seizure; it occurs off-screen and is not described in detail


	4. A Decent Patter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve weathers some uncomfortable conversations; the Soldier attends to his tasks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoy Steve being uncomfortable because honestly, that's the fic.
> 
> Content Notes at the end. Thanks for reading! Please consider commenting: it makes my heart sing.

“ _There’s another letter_ ,” the redhead told him in Russian. She brought him letters and paperbacks and he only read the latter.

“ _Put it in the box_ ,” he responded in the same language. He put down his book. “ _You’ve told him I’m not reading them?_ ”

“ _When love whispers, reason shuts up,_ ” she said.

“ _How is he?_ ”

“ _Moping,_ ” she said and left the suite.

He eyed the box of envelopes. He could watch the Captain— _Steve_ , the name still ached but at least it didn’t cause seizures—on video. Footage of him had lost the same effect as his presence earlier that week. Still, the Soldier didn’t trust the letters: there was too much of Steve in the pages. He’d touched them, smeared ink on the paper with his fingers, licked the envelopes. Maybe something in print or on a screen wouldn’t be so dangerous now, but then it wouldn’t be Steve.

He fought the urge to press a heap of the envelopes to his face and inhale any lingering traces of Steve. It was too pathetic, and his interest could not appear obsessive or threatening while he was being monitored.

Steve wanted to tell him things. The letters were thick with stories.

He didn’t actually give a shit about the memories that crowded against his skin when he thought too much about Steve. They were an inconvenience, not a gift. He could make all the memories he wanted of Steve once he got him out of here.

He hadn’t seen the Alien since the last time he had seen Steve, shouted at him to leave. Maybe they were together. Maybe right now Steve smelled like sweat and ozone and clutched at the sheets while the Alien fucked him.

There was a shooting pain in his temple. A delicate balance had to be struck: he could think about Steve—he couldn’t _not_ think about Steve, about how to properly extract him, about how the muscles in his back moved under his tight shirts—but he couldn’t think of Steve in too much detail.

A detail started an avalanche.

The rest of the team was easier to consider: he had seen most of them in the last few weeks. He hadn’t seen the man in the robotic suit, but this was his Tower. He saw the redhead the most; he liked her inasmuch as he could enjoy the presence of such a clear impediment to his mission. The archer—slow smile, hard eyes, hearing aids—sometimes accompanied the redhead. The man with the wings did not appear to have come with them from D.C. The scientist who dressed in moth colors and hid a monster inside had come in, once; he had stopped in during an examination. The Alien had been there too, standing by in case of any emergencies that might merit killing the Soldier.

The Alien hadn’t taken Steve away. He had to gamble that the Alien couldn’t take Steve so long as the Soldier was convalescing— _best friends since childhood, Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes_ —the best opportunity to take Steve lay between being able to be in the same room with him and being declared some variety of functional by the doctors. One had to be hastened and the other had to be held off.

It might be necessary to get the Alien to beat him again.

In the meantime, there was other work to do.

“I want to see him,” he said to the ceiling, knowing someone was watching.

And fifteen minutes later, there he was. Less time than the Soldier had anticipated.

 “Hi, Steve,” he said, keeping his eyes on the smudge of printer’s ink on his flesh thumb, the cheap paperback in his lap.

“Hi, Buck,” Steve said. He shuffled awkwardly by the door. The peak of human perfection, standing with rounded shoulders and a hangdog expression.

“How ya been?” He looked at Steve like he might look at the sun; the impression stayed even when he blinked.

The voice was warming up nicely, though. Lately, it could make the nurses smile. No effect on the doctors yet, but doctors were inevitably assholes.

“Better. You?”

Another test of his gaze, longer this time. “Got hit by a truck a few weeks back. You get the license plate?” Finally, he wasn’t too stupid on Steve’s proximity to forget his tasks. Now was the time to start laying down suggestions of innocence and vulnerability.

Steve swallowed. “That won’t happen again,” he insisted.

“Glad to hear it. Dunno how many more knocks this braincase can take.” He tapped a metal knuckle to his temple, to test for the pain in Steve’s presence.

“Probably doesn’t help with remembering,” Steve murmured.

“You do, though,” he said and held Steve’s gaze.

He was still like a sun. Always had been.

“I thought I made it worse,” Steve said, his voice hushed.

“It’s just a lot, when you’re here,” he admitted. Steve’s eyes widened. They were so blue. They were _the smell of charcoal dust, the feeling of a sharp, small mouth on his neck, the taste of river water and blood._ He winced.

“Too much?” Hope and the fear of hope thick in Steve’s voice.

“I just have to get used to you again, Rogers.” He tried to smile, not risking any more looks for now. “It only took a few decades the first time, can’t be that hard.”

 “I’ve got a guest room,” Steve said. “I can take you now.”

“Your friends going to let that happen?”

A blush signaled a hit. “If you want to stay with me, you will,” he said, in the same tone he’d promised the Alien wouldn’t beat him again—which remained to be seen. It might be necessary to foster Steve’s possessiveness, lessen his faith in the Alien. Not something to look forward to.

“I don’t remember as much as you’ll think I do,” he said, because it was the right time for an uncomfortable admission, not because it just fell out of his goddamn mouth. “Might never,” he added, because he needed to extend the timeline of the recovery, not because he couldn’t shut the fuck up in front of Steve, who touched his hand.

_The pips of dominoes rubbing against his fingers the soggy pouch of tobacco sullen in his cheek the goddamn glorious sight of Steve Steve Steve_

He grabbed his head, jerking his hand away. “What?” he said, loudly, because he’d missed something. He’d dropped the voice. How was it supposed to sound?

“Come with me, Buck. If you’re ready, I mean.”

He nodded, blinking against the receding pain. “Yeah,” he said, stupidly.

* * *

Bucky mostly kept to Steve’s guest room, as far as Steve could tell. He had brought a pile of paperbacks from the suite in the Tower clinic and spent hours reading in Steve’s living room while Steve sketched, read, and tried not to stare at him. If Bucky wasn’t reading, he was moving. He favored complex stretches and repetitive body-weight exercises like he was in a cell.

He was Bucky and he wasn’t Bucky: there were habits that sparked Steve’s memory, like the incessant reading and the obsession with peanut butter (when he could stomach it).  There were habits that held Steve at bay. He didn't like it when Bucky stared at him like he didn't recognize him, but his least favorite reaction was when Bucky would flinch and suddenly leave the room to get away from Steve. There was nothing else to get away from.

Steve wasn’t sure how much, or if, he slept.

Most of his texting with Sam involved unpaid counseling on Sam's part: Steve needed to make it up to him, but he could barely handle anything beyond suiting up when the call came and trying to keep himself from climbing into Bucky's pocket when he got home. 

He owed Thor, too: he had babysat Steve when Bucky literally couldn't stand the sight of him and they barely spoke now. To the best of his knowledge, Thor went out with Tony to private boxes in sports stadiums and skyped with Jane. He didn’t stop by while Bucky was on Steve’s floor. Sometimes when Bucky was shut up in his room, Steve would ask JARVIS to confirm Thor’s location in the Tower, ask if he could say what he was doing. He spent a lot of time in his rooms and on the roof.

In a strange way, it was like it had been back in Brooklyn: Bucky was the center of his life again. Sometimes Bucky couldn't look at him and that scanned too.

Today had been a good day with Bucky, though. They had a decent patter on good days, if not much in the way of a shared frame of reference. Bucky didn’t bat an eye at technology; unlike Steve, he’d had practice adjusting over temporal jumps.

He still preferred paperbacks, though. Steve resolved to ask JARVIS for more—more by women. Bucky would have gotten a kick out of there being so many lady writers using their full names and getting awards, not being forced to hide behind initials and pseudonyms in the pulps (though some still did: he'd been completely shocked when he looked up Tiptree).

What Bucky remembered mostly turned out to be Steve. Little factoids and details that made Steve’s chest hurt. Sometimes they were wrong; he tried not to lie to Bucky, but a memory misfire could send him to his room for hours.

JARVIS confirmed that Bucky didn’t attempt to leave the suite when Steve was out. He tried not to leave except for emergencies. They were the only time he saw Thor. After battles, he would embrace Steve with a ferocity that compressed his ribcage and then hurry away.

Bucky would stare when Steve came back after battles and retire with the wince that said a headache; it must have been the metallic smells Steve carried back with him. Explosions and concrete dust. Steve wanted to ask if they reminded him of the war, or the seventy years they’d spent apart, but the question would have just hurt them both, so why ask?

Today, though, was a good day. Steve whistled as he took the stairs to the common floor. With two super-soldier appetites, they were out of protein shakes again. The type Tony kept stocked was the one food that never made meals a gastrointestinal roulette. JARVIS had them delivered regularly, but sometimes they went missing in lots; he thought maybe Bucky was planting caches in the apartment.

He nodded to Tony and smiled at Pepper, who was sitting in the living area. Tony looked distracted, which was par for the course, and Pepper looked effortlessly beautiful. She did expend some effort waving off Tony’s flirtations, which he punctuated with bursts from the blender. Rhodes wasn't present: Steve thought they were due for a visit, but he and his calendar weren't really talking recently.

Steve started digging in the cabinets. Sometimes Tony rearranged the contents when he decided a particular system was more efficient. He was invariably right, but that didn't make it any less annoying.

“So, are you guys fucking?” Tony asked after the blender’s most recent retort.

“What?” Steve asked, hitting his head on a cabinet shelf.

“Oh yes, of course, I should have specified,” Tony said, drinking from a smoothie in which the primary ingredient appeared to be grass clippings.  “You and guy who killed Kimble’s wife. I assume you’re not fucking Thor because he would be in a better mood if that was still happening. Have you ever taken a morose Asgardian to a hockey game? He barely eats three servings of nachos: it’s tragic.”

“Tony, it would be grossly unethical for me—” Steve began.

“You’re talking ethics at me? Anne of Soviet Gables says Murderbot’s obsessed with you. You are literally the only person he wouldn’t happily chop into tiny pieces.”

“All the more reason I wouldn’t take advantage of that. He’s confused,” Steve insisted. He looked to Pepper, who was checking her phone.

God, he hated it when Tony sounded triumphant. “So, it’s because he’s confused, and not because of your hammer-wielding boyfriend? Ex? I don’t know what’s going on there. I’ve seen the hugs, though. Is Point Break bad-touching you? Is that allowed, and no-one had the decency to tell me?”

Steve went red. “I—” he said. He watched Pepper take a call; she transformed instantly from amused Tony-wrangler to cool titan of industry. He wondered where Thor was.

“Two lovers,” Tony started singing. He snapped his fingers and rolled his hips in a grotesque parody of a dance. “And I ain’t ashamed. Two lovers and I love them both the same—”

“That doesn’t sound like Black Sabbath,” Steve said, rallying grimly.

“Points for the reference!” Tony saluted him with the smoothie, which was in danger of slopping out onto the floor.  “This one’s Motown, Cap. I think you’d really like it,” Tony said brightly, “As much as you like your two boyfriends. They’re not exactly a matched set, but you certainly do like your beefcake, don’t you. Is that why you didn't bring your wingman with you? Natasha said he's shaped like a normal person. Was Aunt Peggy more stacked during the War?”

Steve groaned. If Thor was hearing any of this—a conversation with Tony was like facing down waves of enemy fire—during his time out, Steve needed to apologize profusely, and with some luck, try to figure out what the hell he was doing.

“Okay, let’s say you don’t want to date them because you’re an idiot. Date me,” Tony suggested. “I love busty blondes. No, seriously, when I was a kid, I jerked off to you _like crazy_ even though I hated you, for obvious dad reasons.” Tony cocked his head as Steve held his face in his hands and prayed Pepper wasn’t listening. It sounded like she was on an important call. Pepper never had any other kind. “I think it might have permanently given me a thing for hate-sex. Do you think Beach Blanket Bingo and Mr. Roboto have had hate-sex yet? Because JARVIS won’t tell me if guard-duty ever got sexy and if you don’t want to be the rope in that tug of war, you can tag me in.”

Steve’s eye twitched as he returned to the cabinets; if the shakes didn’t reveal themselves in the next ten seconds, he was out.

“You can’t have Pepper, though,” Tony continued. “I don’t think she ever had a constantly-jerking-it-to-Captain-America phase and I don’t want her starting now.”

“Don’t be so sure,” Pepper said, ending her call and breezing into the kitchen. “I was a very early bloomer.”

Steve saw the shakes, grabbed them and fled.

* * *

He could watch Steve at night. That had been an unexpected benefit of getting out of the medical suite. Steve slept about six hours a night on average and he left the bedroom door _open_. Even if he had a nightmare, he’d thrash enough before he fully woke that the Soldier could make it to the washroom by the time he left the bed. Otherwise, the Soldier could pass the night just watching him breathe.

It was better than the days by far: no talking, so no need to slip into the Bucky voice. No headaches. And so far, no missions taking Steve away and bringing him back to smell infuriatingly like sweat and ozone.

The only trouble at night was the urge to crawl in Steve’s bed and wrap himself around him. He had to flatten himself against the wall, dig his fingers into his thigh to keep from lurching forward and bury his face in Steve's neck. It was too early for that. It might work later when Steve had relaxed more, when he’d worked a better wedge between him and the Alien. He couldn’t risk it yet; Steve was too easy to irk and make stubborn.

But he wanted it. The second time that Steve had thrashed in his bed and the Soldier had fled to the bathroom, he’d gotten hard for the first time in what might be decades. He thought about the sounds Steve had made, first whimpering in his sleep, then gasping as his movements became bigger. The Soldier hadn’t been able to come and, frustrated, he’d crept back into Steve’s room.

It had been monumentally stupid and he had been asking to get caught. But Steve hadn’t woken again, hadn’t heard the Soldier suck in air as he pressed his face into the edge of the mattress.

Since then, he’d only watched. The voice from the ceiling hadn’t ratted him out, which suggested some privacy protocols in the apartment. Or maybe Steve had told it to ignore anything short of an assassination attempt. That seemed likelier. Steve was an idiot.

In the day, things progressed slowly. The effort Steve put into managing his expectations showed on his face, made his ears pink. Sometimes when he had to leave, the space he left in the apartment was a barbed relief.

The redhead stopped by when Steve was out, if it wasn’t a full mission. Professional courtesy again: he wouldn’t have to do the stupid accent in front of her. Sometimes she brought a samovar and they had tea. She had to know he was running an op on Steve, but she didn’t seem to have enlightened him. It was strange, given her obvious affection for him, the way she almost smiled when she came into Steve’s home.

Maybe she didn’t like the Alien either. Maybe it was pleasant to sit beside a fellow monster and have fewer layers of false humanity to manage. Maybe she was running her own game here and he wished her luck, as long as it didn’t interfere with his plans.

She inhaled the aroma of the tea and her expression held something that was a strange inversion of nostalgia—a mild satisfaction that something was gone and would not come back.

“He’s meeting Maria Hill,” she said. “Did he tell you?”

The Soldier nodded. Steve had, actually—he’d been genuinely apologetic that he wasn’t being called away by some ridiculous crisis. 

“She’s not bad at her work,” he said equitably.

“ _Very_ pretty,” she said with emphasis. It was a clumsy enough insinuation that she was probably teasing him.

“That’s part of the work,” he said. If it had been any other woman sitting across from him, he might have winked. 

“Did HYDRA ask you for that much?”

“Probably less than it asked from you,” he said, shrugging. The metal arm was mostly dead weight now, but it shrugged well. And it looked so _tragic_ : Steve's eyes got big every time he saw it. “You’re _very_ pretty,” he said, matching her earlier tone.

She nodded. It was true, after all. “You’re not so bad, yourself.”

He knew from the files that he had trained her. It would have been expedient to mix affection with his authority. Maybe he hadn’t been on the chemicals then. He had no idea. It wouldn’t earn him any leverage now, so it was irrelevant, beyond its potential impact on Steve. Stoking jealousy might be useful later, but it might just as easily make him feel inadequate and hurt. The old Bucky's memories told him that Steve had always had a complicated relationship with jealousy: he was insecure as hell but he never wanted to seem needy, never wanted to take attention he thought someone else deserved more.  This was more useful than it was annoying, but only just.

“How long has he been with the Alien?” he asked.

“That is a complicated question.” She sipped her tea. “He told you?”

“No, but I’m not a fucking idiot,” he spat, surprised by the sudden viciousness in his tone. The Bucky voice was thick in his mouth: it was interesting to hear it so angry. Normally, he carefully modulated it for Steve, kept it hesitant but sweet and just a little sly.

He smiled, to suggest maybe it had been a performance.  

“A few years, but they’ve been apart for about a year now,” she said. “Thor walks around miserable and bear-hugs him after missions, but you knew about that second part.”

He nodded. It was true, after all.

“Can you get good pelmeni around here?” he asked.

“I don’t think you have clearance to order out,” she said with a smile. “But yes, I’ll bring you some the next time I come to babysit.”

Later, the redhead left, taking her tea and her strategic candidness with her. Steve came back, and he smelled like coffee and city smog. The Soldier felt dozens of minute shifts in his expression and posture as Steve walked in the door: guarded enthusiasm in the eyes, higher voice pitch, lessened vocabulary, stupid accent, some roundness in the shoulders, a smile that didn’t quite settle, all the rest of it. The little details that made him enough like the old Bucky for Steve to want him, enough unlike the man in the Smithsonian footage to be believable. A lot had happened since Bucky Barnes reported for basic training—even Steve wasn't so sentimental he'd ignore that.

The Soldier sipped a protein shake. “Hey, Steve,” he said. His first look at Steve was always a test. He didn’t trust that the headaches wouldn’t sour, wouldn’t send him to the floor. Steve had that look that was ready to hope as it was to hurt: it was maddening—it _expected_ so goddamn much, but he'd never actually say it, just _look_. It made him want to try something, to get a rise out of him—anything other than those big eyes that wanted and were afraid to want.

“What, Buck?” Steve asked, taking off his coat.

“What did the masochist say to the sadist?”

Steve cocked an eyebrow but didn’t supply an answer to the joke.

“Hurt me,” the Soldier answered, with a smile. It wasn’t quite flirtatious. Steve wasn’t ready for that yet, even though he left things around the apartment—Luckies, science fiction novels—like he was baiting a trap for the old Bucky. But he wasn’t ready for out and out flirting. “What did the sadist say to the masochist?”

There was a beat.

“No,” Steve said and laughed.

Bucky sipped the shake. “You and that big guy play those games?” _Like we did_  went unsaid but hardly unconsidered, which was the fucking point.

Steve blushed. “Ah, Buck.” He looked at the counter, shuffled a newspaper he’d left there earlier.

The Soldier knew that the people they had been had traded the parts in the joke back and forth for years. When Steve was little and in charge, he’d made the old Bucky do most of the hurting himself, it seemed. The rare praise after had been Bucky’s favorite part: the Soldier heard those murmurs in his dreams. They were better than any completed objective, better even than that rush when the pain of the chair finally bled away.

When the old Bucky had been in charge of the games, he was much more hands-on: he liked to manhandle Steve's skinny body, press him up against the wall and devour him whole. He dreamed about those sessions much more rarely, pleasant as they were. Bucky had always had to be careful with Steve, though, until after the serum. Then it was maddening, trying to leave marks in Steve's new skin.

The Soldier didn’t have to be careful now.

“C’mon. I ain’t mad about it. You think I would have spent seventy years with a limp dick if I didn’t have techs giving me shots on the regular?”

Steve shook his head, face tightening. “I know, Buck, I just—”

“You always did like a guy who could give and take,” the Soldier interrupted, unmoved by the discomfort in the line of Steve’s shoulders. It felt almost like the teasing Steve used to lay on Bucky when no-one could see.  It was strange: he knew that Bucky had never been much for running his mouth to make Steve hurt, though he could have excelled at it. He'd hurt Steve plenty in other ways, the stupid fuck. At least the Soldier did it for a _reason_. “I just wanna be sure he’s taking care of you, giving you what you need.”

“Let’s talk about something else, Buck.”

 “Oh,” the Soldier said. “That bad, huh? No excuse for that in the absence of needles, I say.”

Steve ran a hand through his hair, gripping the counter with the other. “Just—just fuckin’ stop it, alright?” The voice of a much smaller man.

Bucky was immediately penitent. And there was the other half of the long-ago play, in the sincerity in his voice. The Soldier wasn’t even sure it was completely feigned. “Sorry, Stevie, I—I forget that we can’t talk about that stuff now.” Even if it was partly genuine, the word ‘forget’ was a low goddamn blow and he _knew_ it. “I’m sorry,” he said, in the voice that he heard in his dreams. The voice sounded less stupid when he whispered.

A sunburn on Steve’s skin. “It’s okay,” he said, looking flushed and sick. “It’s okay. You can talk to me about anything, but can we just not discuss that right now?”

 _I am a piece of fucking garbage_ , the old Bucky would have thought as he finished his drink.

The Soldier didn’t care.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content Notes:  
> \- Bucky briefly imagines Steve and Thor having sex; his language is crass but there's very little detail  
> \- Bucky has flashbacks and headaches  
> \- Tony flirts with Steve in an attempt to make him feel better; it makes Steve deeply uncomfortable, largely because Tony and Steve have very different definitions of the line between flirting and harassment. Pepper participates.  
> \- Bucky masturbates in Steve's bathroom; it is heavily implied that he continues masturbating in Steve's room. Steve has not consented to this (and would not, were he given the option)  
> \- Bucky and Natasha briefly discuss their respective sexual abuse as part of their work; both make light of it  
> \- Bucky attempts to manipulate Steve; he purposefully makes him uncomfortable by bringing up their past sexual activity with an emphasis on their consensual kinky sex  
> \- Bucky remembers switching dominant and submissive roles with Steve; references are made to ordered (though consensual) self-harm, as well as praise, verbal abuse, and rough sex  
> \- Bucky refers to his experience with chemical castration multiple times  
> \- Bucky experiences a moment of self-hatred, impacted by his sense of depersonalization


	5. Most Inappropriate

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thor attends a hockey game, Steve takes a moment, and Bucky's plan progresses.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just as a note: if it seems like Thor and Bucky provide too sharp a contrast in the motivations and means to their ends, do consider that Thor's life experience is wildly, wildly different from Bucky's, with way less privation and torture. With that said, Bucky's choices continue to be Not Cool. Don't worry - Thor will pull some selfish shit soon, too! Steve continues to waffle and feel bad, which I hope you enjoy as much as I do.
> 
> Content-specific warnings at the end!

Thor was surprised to see the Widow join them in Stark’s private viewing box.

“My people are _very_ good at this sport,” she said, smiling as she slid into an armchair facing the arena. She toasted him with a libation made by Stark, who as far as Thor could tell, never actually watched the games they attended. The warriors below were furiously battling over their puck. The impacts they made upon each other and the boards surrounding the ice were usually very satisfying. Not so, recently.

Stark was making another complex mix of spirits at a bar that curiously resembled his workshop. There were many small and fussy machines, which Stark liked to have attend him like courtiers. “JARVIS, where’s my atomizer?”

“You put it down next to the nachos, sir.”

“Irish or regular?”

“Regular, sir.”

“There it is!” Stark crowed before returning to his concoctions. He busied himself among his toys.

“Not hungry?” the Widow asked.

“Oh, yes,” Thor said, but made no move to rise from his seat. There was an impressive feast behind them—apparently well-mixed with Stark’s errant tools—but it did not inspire his hunger.

“You’re not handling Steve’s guest very well,” the Widow said, without further preamble.

He shrugged, disliking the sudden urge to downplay his inner turmoil. It was not in his nature to hide his feelings, yet he knew that Steven was intensely private. How strange that he readily allowed his team to see him bleed in battle but guarded his feelings as if their existence shamed him.

He also knew that Stark’s recent glut of invitations came from the same kindness as Barton’s entreaties to join him and his hound in their jaunts to the dog-park, and, apparently, the Widow’s current overtures. But where Stark’s distracted hospitality and the company of Barton and his hound were forms of support he could accept without implicating Steven, the Widow’s statement was baldly straightforward.

“Jane has introduced me to the concept of ‘emotional labor’,” he said, thinking of long sessions on Skype, punctuated by Darcy’s exhortations. Jane’s kind eyes, rolling at him from a far distance. “It is a mighty task that is often left to women. I have called upon Jane for much of it recently, and I would prefer not to burden you.”

“Oh, but I’m a spy first and a woman second.”

Thor frowned. The Widow was sometimes a mystery. “Do you jest?” he asked.

She considered the question. “I’m not sure,” she responded. “We were trained to think of our bodies as another weapon, not the basis of our identity. It can be useful to be a woman.” She sipped her drink. “It annoys me that I default to thinking of it that way.”

He had no idea how to respond. He debated going to retrieve some nachos. “I think…” he paused. “I think much more about my calling as a warrior than my nature as a man. Both feel natural, but only one particularly commands my attention. I am unsure what that portends.”

The Widow nodded. Her hair contrasted beautifully with her black clothes. She wore a richly woven black sweater, the patterns of which could ensorcel the eye. She was very comely, but it was a beauty that was carefully cultivated—a weapon, like her sex. He hoped there were those that she allowed to see her without artifice. Perhaps Barton? Barton possessed a great well of kindness within him.

“Do you think much about Steve?” she asked.

“Of course,” he said, his voice unexpectedly gruff, The Widow was not his enemy. And neither was Barnes, as much as his hold over Steven rankled. It had been one thing to be grateful to a valiant ghost for loving Steven, for protecting him when his body had been weak; it was another to have him alive and present, consuming Steven’s attention and time. “What of you? You care for Steven.”

“I do,” she said, taking a spear of olives from her drink and looking at it thoughtfully. “I don’t trust the Winter Soldier, but that’s a professional courtesy. He wants something from Steve, but I don’t think he’ll hurt him.”

Thor snorted. “He hardly needs the help. Steven has a singular talent for acquiring injury.”

“Lucky he has the serum.” She delicately extracted an olive from the spear with her teeth.

“It only encourages him, I fear,” he said heavily. “I require beer. Please excuse me.”

He dawdled at the bar and the over-burdened table. He waved off a proffered potion before Stark poured him a large beer. “Cheers, Blue Crush,” Stark said, turning back to his machines and several apparently discarded experiments. Some of them smoked.

“Aye,” he said, looking at the feast without enthusiasm. He felt unlike himself, constrained by Midgardian mores—their dissembling, their curious attachment to shame. It was almost enough to send him back to Asgard, but he could never leave Steven with Barnes. …Though he had, truly. He had left Steven unprotected with the assassin for some time now. He shifted several offerings onto the plate and sat back down near the Widow.

“What does he want from Steven?” he asked.

The Widow pursed her lips. She was a völva, a witch. She had the power to prophecy as well as enchant.

“I think he wants Steve, but he’s not thinking past how to acquire him, which is out of character. The Winter Soldier’s operational standard is supposed to be perfection from start to finish.”

“How will he possess Steven more than he does already?”

Her smile was mysterious. “What would you do to keep Steve, if you could?” she asked, as if posing a riddle.

Steal him. Kidnap him in the night like a bride. Hoard him like a treasure. Was that what Barnes wanted? He had done it already; he lazed like a wyrm on gold in Steven’s apartment.

The Widow relaxed; her expression became more knowable, even kind. “Consider this my offer of emotional labor,” she said, finishing her drink. “Just to take some of the pressure off Dr. Foster. She has a Nobel to win.”

Jane had indeed asked him to rely on her slightly less; she was not without her own complex feelings regarding his relationship with Steven. She had, one late night, berated him for _leaving him alone like this, just like_ — “You are familiar with the skills that Barnes possesses?”

“Intimately,” she said, which made him hesitate.

The two versions of Barnes arose in his mind: the cowed prisoner and the laughing goad. His slyness, his half-hidden viciousness was worryingly familiar. “You believe he is manipulating Steven to some greater end?”

“ _I_ manipulate Steve,” she said candidly, “And so do you. Those bear hugs after the fights? You know Steve has the emotional defenses of a damp tissue.”

He colored. “That had not occurred to me.”

She looked at him skeptically.

“Truly,” he protested. “I merely wished to…” He looked down at the plate he had heaped with foodstuffs and put it on a nearby table. He had wanted to touch Steven, to remember his weight in his arms, to remind himself that Steven would allow him that liberty even as a comrade. It soothed Mjölnir, too: to guide her with a hand that had recently held Steven was a joy for them both. The lingering warmth on his hand made their aim truer, their power more certain. “It was not my intention to manipulate him.”

“But?”

He watched the sport below. Bodies met and crashed. The puck slid by their clashes, undeterred from its own paths, as if it mocked their efforts to capture it. He paid little attention to their strategy—a detail that usually captured his keen interest. He sighed heavily. “If he had reformed his relationship with Barnes, I could at least celebrate his happiness.” He met the Widow’s witches’ eyes. “But he is not happy.”

“And?”

“I am not convinced that the man he knew—the man he still sees now—is the man Barnes has become.”

“That makes two of us,” she said, chewing the last olive. She was so calm; the woman had feelings, but she was worse than Steven. Where he choked on his emotions, she could cloak them entirely. Perhaps during the next journey to the park of dogs he would ask Barton about this.

Another conversational feint, choosing subtlety over directness. Midgardian obfuscation was catching.

Stark sat down across from them, directly in their line of sight for the game. Not that Thor was watching closely. His inattention shamed the valiant efforts below. He should be cheering on their striving.

“I don’t think Lad Liberty and the Red Menace are boning,” Stark said. As frustrating as he could be, his directness was very comforting. “I assume that’s what you were discussing? You’re not sleeping with Cap, are you?” he asked.

Thor began to respond when the Widow interrupted. “No,” she said smoothly. “I’ll admit to making an effort while Thor was gone, though.”

Thor’s face burned with the thought of the Widow and Steven together. “You—”

“Please, Ball-peen. You really kept it in your hauberk the whole time you were away? You, the God of Fertility? With those shoulders?”

“I did not pursue lovers other than Steven while we were apart,” he said, louder than he intended. “And I rejected those offers I received.” It had been commented upon. Fandral in particular could not understand why he hadn’t merely brought Steven with him, as if his beloved was a toy. Perhaps Thor’s rejections had stung.

They had made no promises when he left, understanding that their lives belonged to their duties. He should have insisted. He should have refused to return to Asgard without some surety, whether pledging his troth or at least stating his intentions. Steven’s dislike of such open discussion should have spurred him on, rather than provided an excuse to hide in words unsaid.

“Oh,” Stark said, after a long pause. “Oh shit. Really?”

Thor drained his beer and went to pour himself another. He could still hear the pair.

“You really tried it on with Cap to no avail? Was I the only one having sex this year?”

“What can I say? He’s incorruptible.” Her arch tone softened. “I tried to get him on a few dates when it looked like he didn’t expect Thor back, and when that didn’t work, I tried seducing him. He said he valued our friendship too much.” There was a rare warmth in her voice.

The image of the Widow using her considerable skills on Steven was…distracting. At least he _trusted_ her, and she had, apparently, waited until Steven had not appeared to hold out hope of his return. That thought was bad enough on its own. Damn his silence and Steven’s low self-regard: when had he lost hope of the return?  At least the Widow had tried to comfort him. What would have followed if she succeeded? Her hair a tumbling glory in Steven’s hands, his lips sucking purple bruises on her pale throat—no artifice between them, just need pulsing like a wound.

Perhaps it would have been better if Steven had allowed himself to be seduced, rather than be left alone for so long, only to let himself be beaten.

He examined the foamy head of his beer, trying not to feel sullenly aroused. It was most inappropriate.

“There you have it, Point Break,” Stark said companionably as he returned to them. “Cap doesn’t have Red Fever. He certainly didn’t value _your_ friendship too much to keep from boning you.” He looked at Thor intently, his hand hesitating over the drinks he had brought with him from the bar. “I really can’t handle you like this. Do we need strippers? Puppies? If any city has puppies that strip, it is New York.”

“Berlin,” the Widow said with dull certainty before she visibly brightened and pressed the abandoned plate back into his hands. “Tell us how you got Steve to put aside your friendship to hop into bed with you.” She winked and took a piece of fried cheese from his plate. She popped it into her mouth salaciously. “Apparently I could use some tips.”

“I think there’s something wrong with him,” Stark said. “He _never_ wants to sleep with me and I’m the total package. Even Rhodey says so.”

“He does not.”

“Well, he _would_.”

“Steven’s taste is difficult to account for,” Thor agreed, surprised by his own laughter. Somehow, their professions of lust for—or at least attempted enticements toward—Steven had lightened his mood somewhat. His voice rose; it felt fuller in his throat. “I did court him for an extended period. Perhaps that made the difference compared to your more spontaneous offers.”

“ _Spontaneous_ ,” the Widow said with withering scorn, playing at offence.

“Time for an epic seduction saga,” Stark said happily and sipped from a glass that appeared to be full of small ruby-colored spheres.

* * *

Steve dozed, half-aware of the blankets twisted around his legs. He was almost dreaming: Thor and Bucky were sitting in a smoky bar, drinking together. Beer for Thor, whiskey for Bucky. They looked companionable and the image was so unlikely it made him all the more aware of the sheet caught under his body, the pillow hot against his cheek. He tried to focus on the sight of the two of them, to sink into it the warmth of it, away from his bed.

It was Thor, as he had been before his most recent return to Asgard, and Bucky, before…before everything. Bucky with his dapper haircut and easy smile. Looking slim compared to Thor, though they were both beautiful. They were talking conspiratorially over their drinks, giving each other knowing looks and the occasional friendly shove. Eyeing the people around them, confident they could have their pick of the crowd—which, of course, was true.

Even at their most relaxed, it would still be a competition. They would egg each other on with daring eyes. Thor would guffaw and slap Bucky’s back while Bucky rolled his eyes, secretly delighted with the exuberance on display. Bucky always liked attention.

He palmed himself through his pajama pants and pretended he was just dreaming, just seeing something his brain had put together without his say-so. Not his fault. Not even really jerking off to it either, just getting some friction through the cotton. A little more friction, now.

If they kissed. If they kissed it would start as a kind of contest to see who would back down first. A perverse display of masculinity between the urbane Bucky, who wasn’t queer, he just liked what he liked, and the unabashed Thor, who found Midgardian attitudes towards sex quaint. Maybe in the backroom of a bar, smelling like stale beer. Thor’s hard hands mussing up Bucky’s coiffed hair. Bucky’s dirty laugh against Thor’s mouth. It would be almost a scuffle, before they each started admitting—with their lips, their hands—that they enjoyed it. And then it really would be a scuffle, with Thor using his strength and Bucky his guile. Thor relenting, this time, because Bucky had something to prove when he leaned over the bigger man and what Thor liked best of all was giving people what they wanted.

Steve reached for his cock, abandoning the pretense that this was just sleepy fumbling. It was fine as long as he was just thinking about them with each other, if he didn’t imagine them _looking at him, one pair of eyes warmly amused, more blue than gray; the other pair cocky and cool, more gray than blue_. _Looking at him_. _They were touching each other but they were looking at him._

He groaned, stroking himself harder. Vaguely, he remembered the door was open. It was probably fine. He never saw Bucky in the mornings. He hadn’t come in a while and this felt so _good_. He’d be quiet. Starting now.

They _weren’t_ looking at him—imagining that was impossibly greedy and it made him feel like he’d come immediately and he didn’t want to just yet—they were looking at each other. Bucky was on top, pinning Thor’s wrists to a dirty floor. He rubbed off against him shamelessly, closing his eyes to focus on the sensation. Thor would stare up at him: he had a weakness for beauty revealed by need. And Bucky’s eyes would open, widen further at the strength laid out beneath him. He’d challenge him to fight back, intrigued by Thor’s pliancy, curious how far he could press him. Bucky, shoving forward, jerkily opening his pants and shoving his cock in Thor’s eager mouth—

Steve came anyway, embarrassed how quickly he had drawn himself off. Especially while thinking about Thor and Bucky like that—for god’s sake, it was _wrong_. He panted, lost in the guilt that rose while the pleasure ebbed. Eventually, he opened his eyes to stare at the ceiling, and hastily grabbed tissues from the box on his night-stand. He cleaned himself off as best he could—his shirt was a write-off and it went in the laundry—and decided to go for a run. He had told Bucky he might start doing that again.

It was a good morning to run—fast, hard, and most importantly, away. Maybe it was a good day to take catch up on the tasks Hill had asked him about, ones that would keep him out of the Tower. He was benched from the runs on HYDRA bases that Natasha and Clint took point on. But where Thor and Bruce stayed out of those often underground runs out of obvious necessity, and Tony hadn't gotten back in the suit yet, Steve was off the roster so he could stay with Bucky. Who he now wanted to avoid.

A run on the treadmill in the gym, then, and a shower—Thor never trained there, why would he?—and then he would have the day to try to feel less like he’d taken advantage of both Thor and Bucky’s trust, shamed them without their knowing.

“JARVIS, can you tell Bucky I’ll be out for part of the day?”

“Yes, Captain,” JARVIS said.

* * *

The Soldier hid behind the arm-chair until Steve had been gone for a full ten minutes. It would have been just like Steve to jerk off, run out of his apartment, and then run back because he’d forgotten his pants or something equally stupid.

That had been an unexpected pleasure. He’d been watching Steve doze, per usual, but then Steve’s breath had hitched, and he had started touching himself. When was the last time the old Bucky had seen that? 1944? The Soldier had seen in it in his dreams, not knowing who the beautiful, needy man with the changing body was but knowing that his presence in the Soldier’s dreams was perhaps the only secret he had. The only thing he owned. The man’s moans and his praise were a constant through a parade of handlers, a bloody kaleidoscope of shifting protocols and missions. Steady as the return to the ice, but as pleasant as the ice was not.

The dreams had not compared to the real thing—to the reality of Steve’s groans, his fruitless efforts to keep silent. Luckily his brief stupor after orgasm had meant the Soldier had plenty of time to hide after watching Steve come all over himself.

Honestly, it wasn’t much more of a kick in the head than just having Steve nearby. Every time he realized this wasn’t some unusually pleasant hallucination, the Soldier wanted to kiss him on the mouth. Bite him on his beak of a nose. Huddle up by his feet and confess that he wasn’t his Bucky, but he was the closest Steve would get, so why not give it a try? But the mission overrode that.

To the best of his knowledge—which was, admittedly fairly extensive in this case—this was the first time Steve had come outside of the shower since the Soldier had moved in. He wasn’t entirely sure that Steve had been masturbating in the shower, but sometimes he looked marginally more relaxed after the showers that lasted a few minutes longer than normal.  Maybe he was slowly letting down his guard—such as it was, this was Steve after all, he was an idiot—with the Soldier in his space. Maybe he wouldn’t have minded if the Soldier had slipped in with him.

It was still too early to be sure. What had he been thinking about? Steve had a careless mouth, he knew; was it too much to expect him to say something revealing? Even the Alien’s name would have been useful data.

His body language, though—rolling in on himself, shaking his head and wincing at the moment the Soldier had nearly expected him to come—had indicated shame. That might suggest he was thinking about the Soldier, but Steve could feel ashamed about anything. 

Maybe he should let Steve catch the Soldier at the same thing. Would letting him hear a whispered “Steve” be too much, too soon? Steve’s theatrical self-denial was a constant factor; it kept the Alien mostly at bay, but it kept the Soldier from just shoving his nearly-useless arm hard under Steve’s chin and fucking him senseless.

He was reserving that as a last-ditch effort if things went really bad; if he did it right, the resulting fallout would have Steve too fucked up with conflicting emotions to leave him, at least initially. It would give the Soldier an opening to remove him by force. Was it headed that way? Steve had been out for longer periods recently, for less dire reasons. What did it mean?

He had to start pressing Steve, needing him more. Make more of a show of the headaches—their rush of pain and memories was rarer now, but easy to fake. Maybe he’d ask to go along on Steve’s errands, make a sullen little show of not wanting to go out but needing to keep an eye on Steve.  It wouldn’t even be a complete show: where Steve’s presence had been a beating before, now his absences were what hurt.

The trick was to mix carefully what was real with what was useful pretense; he couldn’t entirely trust himself not to make the helplessness real. He only wanted to _seem_ to need Steve so hard he wouldn’t have time for anyone else.

The team could be a resource as well as a threat, there. Maybe it was time to encourage Steve to expand Bucky’s horizons to other floors of the building, so he could moodily bluster around the other members of the team. Withdrawn and angry, balefully _present_ because he couldn’t handle being left alone, now that he was coming back to himself. The redhead and the Alien were dangerous: they would look at his unsteady progress with suspicion.  But the rest? They could be used to show that he was still—maybe even increasingly—dependent on Steve after making some initial improvements.  Not so much a plateau as a revelation of how deep the wounds went. That would appeal to Steve: he understood hurting.

Maybe it was time to start having issues with food again. Steve needed to feel needed: relying on Steve, showing embarrassed gratitude with hints of deeper feelings resurfacing should help that along. That was how it had been with Steve and the old Bucky: this just had the roles reversed and some amnesia bullshit added in. Steve would feel good, finally taking care of his old friend, returning the favor. He’d feel that little bit of superiority the old Bucky had vehemently denied needing even as he let Steve’s dependency guarantee no-one could take him away, no-one would look past his flaws to _want_ to take him.

And it hadn’t even _worked_.

The old Bucky had been a sentimental, self-deluding idiot and he had let the Army take Steve from him, let the fall and the Red Room take him away from Steve. The Soldier wouldn’t repeat his mistakes even if he had to cripple one of them to do it.

“Captain Rogers will be out for part of the day,” the creepy fucking voice in the ceiling said as he rose from behind the chair. There was a hint of judgment in its cool voice. Even if it reported to someone that he watched Steve, it would just confirm that he was poor, codependent Bucky, shuffling around the apartment with his ruined arm. The Soldier’s obsession would have been worrying, but Bucky? He just relied on Steve too much, wanted him too much. It was sad, really.

The trick was getting Steve to start being just as bad. More Bucky behavior was needed, rooted in the vulnerability that Steve used to furiously hide and now gravitated toward.

He should probably go grab Steve’s shirt out of the laundry and jerk off in the bed—maybe that would get the computer to grouse on him. That would get the next phase—Operation: How Fucking Pathetic—started nicely. Failing that, it was still his first chance to finger himself open in Steve’s bed this century.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content-Specific Warnings  
> \- There are some general references to violence taking place at the game  
> \- Natasha, Thor, and Tony drink alcohol, though none become inebriated  
> \- Natasha and Tony discuss efforts to hit on Steve (unsuccessful)  
> \- Thor imagines Steve and Natasha having sex (the description is brief)  
> \- There is a scene in which Steve masturbates, thinking about Thor and Bucky; he feels awful afterward; he imagines Thor and Bucky kissing, wrestling, and Bucky roughly initiating oral sex with Thor without asking whether he consents  
> \- Bucky watches Steve masturbate (which he would not consent to, if he knew)  
> \- Bucky adjusts his ongoing plan to manipulate Steve  
> \- Brief reference is made to Bucky considering a) sexually assaulting Steve and b) maiming himself or Steve to achieve his ends  
> \- Bucky considers masturbating in Steve's bed; brief reference is made to him planning to smell Steve's shirt (which has semen on it) and finger himself anally


	6. Plenty to Discuss

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thor makes an offer; Bucky makes a scene.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter and the next were originally one, but it was gargantuan. Now they are both a bit small. Thanks very much for your time! Please consider commenting or leaving kudos? They make me really happy.
> 
> Note: the original estimation of ten chapters appears to have been wrong. I'm anticipating something closer to twelve if the plot bunnies will cooperate. 
> 
> Chapter-specific content notes at the end.

Steve left the apartment to give Bucky time alone with the medical team. There were no signs left on him of the struggle on the hospital room floor, save the limp, heavy arm and a hardness in Bucky’s eyes when he brought up Thor. He did it periodically as if testing whether a bruise would still hurt if he poked it. Steve wasn’t sure if it was his bruise or Bucky’s.

There were other things Bucky needed checked out. There was the stomach thing and the memory thing and the sleep thing. He knew now that Bucky wasn’t sleeping at night. Whenever Steve woke up in the night, Bucky was in the bathroom or reading in the living room. Steve was almost sure he caught naps in the closet of the guestroom. Once, Bucky fell asleep on the couch, but he’d shaken awake within a few minutes, looking confused and upset. He’d stared at Steve, colored, and fled to his room.

There was still plenty to discuss with the medical team, was the thing. They might be able to start having other members of the team visit, though: Bucky had started asking who it was Steve went to see when he left.

Natasha’s visits were going well, apparently: that made Steve optimistic that Bucky might talk to the others. They didn’t have as much in common with Bucky as Natasha, but they understood trauma, they understood insomnia and misery you kept tucked behind your teeth.

Bucky had started asking Natasha about Russian food lately. Steve would learn to make it, if he wanted.

He would have joined Bucky for his cat-naps in the closet, if he wanted.

But Bucky wasn’t the only person Steve was worried about. After floating around the common floor for a few hours, he cleared his throat and, without meaning to, looked up at the ceiling.

“JARVIS,” he said. “Is Thor in the Tower?”

“Mr. Odinson is in his room,” JARVIS replied smoothly.

Steve debated asking JARVIS to ask whether Thor would accept visitors, but he decided to take the stairs down and knock on Thor’s door.

Thor opened the door, freshly showered and shirtless. He was toweling his hair, ruffling wet strands with thick cotton. “Steven,” he said, looking both pleased and confused.

“Can I come in?” He tried not to stare. It wasn’t merely that Thor was big—though he was unarguably that: he had at least three inches of height on Steve, who was hardly small—it was that he took up space like it was his due. Like he was tackling the task of being with enthusiasm.

What was that like? He’d wondered since they’d met, but he’d never figured out how to formulate the question without making Thor worry.

“Of course,” Thor said, walking back into his living area. Thor’s floor still had a large fireplace and comfortable, rough-hewn furniture. Steve wondered if his bedroom still looked the same and shook his head. It wasn’t fair to want that. With a brief flicker of horror, he remembered the last time he’d admitted how unfair his desires really were and how good, how horrible it had felt.

“Can I offer you anything to eat?” Thor was rummaging in his kitchen space, surrounded by open cupboard doors. Whenever Thor was home, his apartment looked like it had been robbed. Steve had forgotten that.

Steve nodded in response to Thor’s offer. He was mostly living off of protein shakes and peanut butter sandwiches, lately.

“I have leftover noodles,” Thor said triumphantly, hefting several large cartons out of the fridge.

“Thanks, Thor,” Steve said. His face colored at the sight of Thor, relaxed in his kitchen. He looked so different from the few times they’d met after missions. Maybe it was Steve that made him look like that. Maybe the hangdog expression would creep back on his face if Steve stayed too long. A maximum exposure limit for the irritant that was Steve Rogers.

“How is your friend?” Thor asked, once the first set of cartons were steaming on the low table in front of them.

Steve stuffed a large forkful of food in his mouth to avoid answering. He chewed, his cheeks bobbing. It was hot. When was the last time he’d eaten warm food? Bucky couldn’t eat anything that wasn’t room temperature. “Um. Honestly, I’m not sure,” he said finally.

Thor watched him, expressive eyes growing concerned. “Why?”

Steve stabbed at the noodles. “Sometimes he seems fine. Sometimes he’s…mean? It sounds stupid. He’s been through hell—I’d be _worried_ if he seemed fine all the time. Of course he’s angry.” He shook his head. “We, uh, we don’t have to talk about it, if you don’t want to.” It was ridiculous to burden Thor with his concerns about Bucky. He didn’t even like Bucky, had looked at him with suspicion from the beginning, had ruined Bucky’s arm. It still hung loosely from his shoulder because Steve and Natasha couldn’t agree on how to have it fixed. Seeing it made Steve’s stomach hurt.

“His well-being is important to you, as yours is to me,” Thor said, privately imagining the vicious-eyed man revealed in flashes in Stark’s room of healing. He smiled at the healers, but when he looked past them, all he was doing was baring his teeth.

Thor had hoped that Barnes would remain shy of Steven, and save his venom for others, but it was clear he was being cruel. He knew all too well that Steven would absorb the abuse, thinking it was his due for failing to save him.

He should not allow Steven to suffer, not even for Barnes. Seeing him so uncertain only confirmed that it was time to intervene. How to make good after his inaction?

“Thank-you,” Steve said, and he looked at Thor for too long. Thor’s hair was curling slightly as it dried: it fell down his shoulders, always a few shades paler than his beard. Broth dripped from the chopsticks he used to move remarkable amounts of noodles from the take-out container to his mouth. Steve cleared his throat and slurped some more noodles. He felt uncultured using a fork. He should have learned by now.

“I know that he has had very little time to heal,” Thor said, trying not to smile at Steven’s expression as he ate, at his rounded cheeks, his reddening skin. Convincing him would require seriousness. “But I believe that the healers of Asgard could do him much good. Between the two of us, we could—” _watch him_ “—watch over him while he received their care.”

“You don’t have to do that,” Steve protested.

“I would do no less for your shield-brother.” This was true, even if he had his doubts that Barnes remained that man. He would certainly be better-poised to intervene in Asgard, to keep whatever poison dripped from Barnes’ jaws from entering Steven’s ear. He had been debating how best to involve himself: it would be easier to control the situation in the palace.

And perhaps this viciousness could be healed. And then he would let them be. But until then, Steven remained his responsibility. He had let cowardice keep him from having to watch Steven with Barnes and he would brook it no longer.

“I have told you before: I do not object to your loving him,” he said, watching Steven. How to explain himself? How to encourage Steven to accept his aid, if not his affection? “I would do for him anything I would do for you.”

Was it true? He felt that Mjölnir found his claims wanting. If not exactly untrue, then true for complex reasons that Steven might not accept.

Steve blushed, staring down into the take-out carton. Thor’s offer was incredibly kind.

He could take Bucky to Asgard. He could have Thor’s help, have him nearby. Maybe once Bucky was well, he and Thor might understand each other. Maybe—

It was an unfair hope: Bucky wasn’t broken. He was who he _was_ now and he’d always been a bit mercurial, a bit harsh on bad days but kind when it counted. But perhaps Thor’s people could help with the headaches. And the rest. If Bucky was willing. He’d have to explain things carefully: Bucky had no reason to trust Thor and scarcely more to trust Steve, given what had happened to him since the helicarrier. Since well before that, because of Steve.

But Thor could help him where Steve couldn’t.

“Can I…” he started, reaching out to touch Thor’s hand. He hesitated.

Thor took Steven’s hand in his. Steven’s fingers were elegant for their size and strength and quite cool, compared to his usual temperature. He pressed his beloved’s hand flat between his palms. He rubbed the spare flesh there, as if it was winter and Steve had recently come in from the chill.

“Your hands are cold,” he said; he took the other and rubbed them both. He leaned forward and huffed a hot breath into his cupped hands. He kept his mouth close to Steven’s skin and looked up curiously. “This is most unusual. Are you unwell?”

“I’m okay,” Steve said, and he believed it. He blushed at Thor’s attentions. He was still rubbing, inspecting Steve’s hands with care. “I could be eating more, I guess.” Bucky had been having more trouble with food again lately. It seemed cruel to eat when Bucky couldn’t.

“I will procure more noodles,” Thor said, pleased that Steven hadn’t withdrawn his hands. He did not have to surrender him yet. “Friend JARVIS, could you estimate what cuisines would suit Steven and his friend Barnes and arrange for regular deliveries? I will provide funds.”

“Yes,” JARVIS replied, “Though Sir will be displeased if you do not allow him to pay. He has been concerned about Captain Rogers’ well-being of late.”

Thor focused on kneading Steven’s fingers, exhaling more heat against them to see Steven’s flustered smile. The Widow had warned him against manipulating Steven: surely it was no act of beguilement to make him blush? Belatedly, he responded to Stark’s unseen majordomo. “Anthony has informed me that I receive recompense for my battles alongside the Avengers. It remains his money, after a fashion. I will pay.”

Steve looked at their joined hands, felt Thor’s beard brush his wrists. Something about the enclosure was meant to be drawn, but the want was paradoxical—like everything he wanted lately. “He has some trouble with food,” he said quietly.

“I will liaise with the medical team to determine appropriate choices, Captain Rogers.”

“Thank-you, Friend JARVIS.” Thor said. He opened his hands, spreading Steven’s open palms like the pages of a book. Thor kissed one hand, then the other, lips hesitating on the lines there. Warmer now, more like flesh than stone. He smiled at Steven. His beloved’s eyes were wide, painted a darker blue than usual. There were far-off storms in each slim blue ring.

“You are not alone in this,” he said, gathering Steven’s hands below his chin. “And you deserve to be cared for, even as you care for your friend.” He let a little longing bloom in his voice. He was unashamed. Enough of these silences and acts of dissembling. “Will you let me care for you, Steven?”

Steven opened his mouth to answer and JARVIS interrupted apologetically.

“I’m sorry, Captain Rogers, but Sergeant Barnes is asking after you. He is quite agitated.”

Thor embraced him: again, the brief crush of the battlefield. He could hardly expect more.

“You should see to your friend,” he declared, clapping a hand on Steven’s shoulder. His fingers were hot from the gust of his breath and he squeezed, wishing he could warm all of Steven with the air of his lungs, the path of his lips, before he had to let him go.

* * *

“Where the fuck were you?” Bucky demanded as he entered the apartment.

Steve reddened and closed the door behind himself. For a brief moment of panic, he thought about lying. “I just—I went to see Thor.”

Bucky grimaced. “Jesus, I thought you were dead. The voice in the fucking walls said I didn’t have _clearance_ to ask where you were, which I figured meant a hospital, not someone’s goddamn _boudoir_. If you needed to get laid, you coulda just told me. I'da saved you the elevator ride.”

“I’ll fix that,” Steve began, then he blinked. There were needles in his skin, relentless as Bucky stared at him. Gears shifted in his brain. Was Bucky mad they hadn't—but he couldn't, it would be— “Wait. It wasn’t like that,” he insisted.

“Oh shit,” Bucky said theatrically. “Do people still think Captain America doesn’t fuck? You don’t have to lie to me, Stevie.”

“I’m not lying—”

Bucky continued, rolling his eyes. “I mean, if needing some alien dick counts as a fucking emergency on par with robots in Queens, fine, it’s an emergency. I _remember_ how you get,” Bucky said, spitting the word _remember_ the way other people emphasized curses.

Steve’s stomach clenched. He shouldn’t have eaten. It only gave him something to want to throw up. “Goddammit, Buck, it wasn’t like that. He thinks his people can help you. They’re advanced. They’re way beyond us. His mother’s a healer—she could try helping you.”

“His mother can try sucking my dick,” Bucky said flatly. “That, I could use.”

“Bucky, do you want help or not?”

 “I don’t need help,” Bucky hissed. “I thought I had my _friend_.” He stomped toward his room.

“Buck—”

“Fuck off, Stevie. If Thor’s ma turns up, tell her I’m taking care of my cock myself. Some of us don’t need to leave the apartment to do that. _Don’t get to, neither_.” Bucky shouted the last few words and slammed the door shut.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content Notes:  
> \- There are references to insomnia and digestive issues (including strong feelings of nausea) sprinkled throughout the chapter.  
> \- Steve makes a very opaque reference to the masturbation scene in the previous chapter.  
> \- Thor is a bit manipulative and rather kids himself about it. (C'mon, Thor.)  
> \- Steve blames himself for Bucky's time as the Winter Soldier, his subsequent injuries, and basically everything. (He does blame Thor a little bit for Bucky's prosthetic being injured, though he does so privately.)  
> \- Thor breathes on and kisses Steve's hands and is generally quite touchy after Steve begins to ask if he can touch Thor (he cuts himself off and does not initiate any touching). I think Steve essentially consents to be touched in this instance, but please feel free to let me know if you think it's a bit unclear. Touches are limited to Steve's hands.  
> \- Bucky is very angry with Steve; it's not obvious whether the anger is genuine or not. He uses foul language.  
> \- Bucky slut-shames Steve and makes crude references to oral sex and masturbation.


	7. Just Keep Still

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The fallout from Steve and Bucky's fight includes a shower and a crisis.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is probably the longest continuous POV in the whole story. Apologies for a lack of Thor! Originally, this chapter and the previous were one whole, but they needed to be broken up. A note on MCU canon-deviation: in this continuity, Steve and Bucky met a younger age (think closer to eight and nine, compared to the MCU's twelve and thirteen). The circumstances remain similar: Steve was a very early bloomer in terms of pissing people off. Thanks for your time!
> 
> Content Warnings at the end. There is a non-graphic reference to underage sexuality that may be a hard limit for some readers. Check the end notes if you want a summary. Steve describes key plot events in the next chapter, so this one can be skipped if need be. Take care!

Steve spent an hour in the living room before he understood that Bucky wouldn’t come out again until Steve left. Bucky had always been one for sulking and Steve didn’t want to play his part in this century’s version of the pageant. He told JARVIS that Bucky was always free to know where he was and explained his itinerary.

He went to the gym and destroyed a reinforced punching bag before showering. Feeling a little better, he went to watch the commuters rush through splintered light in Grand Central. He wore shabby sweats, slouched and wore a baseball cap: he was still kind of a big guy, but there were lots of big guys in New York. He sketched the hurry around him more than the people who made it, using jittery lines and smearing graphite with his thumb.

Sometimes people thought he liked Grand Central because it looked the same: it didn’t, the way someone might have mostly the same bones but look a damn sight different at twenty and at ninety. He did like the glimpses of the station’s younger skins—it had been renovated and rebuilt more than once before he was even born—his favorite was a mural left over from the old theatre, with shooting stars and planets. It looked over a wine-shop now.

He liked that it still seemed far up, far away.

Steve stared at a sketch. He hoped Bucky had come out to eat something, to use the bathroom. He hated thinking that Bucky would treat his room like a hide site: a place you stayed at out of grim necessity until you took the shot. He had told JARVIS to let Bucky know Steve would be out until the early evening—he’d felt guilty about leaving, but he thought Bucky could use some privacy. He’d nearly walked in on him masturbating in the bathroom with the lights off the day before. Maybe that was why Bucky had been sensitive about the subject of sex. Bucky’s offhand comments confirmed what the files had indicated, that the Winter Soldier was chemically castrated unless sexual availability was necessary to approach a target. Free of HYDRA, was it any surprise he was trying to feel human again?

It was obvious Bucky remembered that they used to do that together: he made jokes about it, always with reference to _Thor_ and always about sex, not about their relationship, that made Steve want to hide under the table. It was less clear whether he knew that Bucky had actually taught Steve how to do it right beyond awkwardly humping his mattress and thinking ashamedly of Greta Garbo or Robert Taylor. At the time, he had felt hopelessly behind Bucky, a worldly whole year his senior. Now, the ages they’d been when things had started seemed obscenely young.

Maybe it was for the best if he was the only person who knew the exact details. Thor knew some of it—he’d teased Steve endlessly about his ‘erotic tutelage’ and happily shared stories about his own—but his ideas about sex were sometimes baffling and he had no sense of privacy or shame. This was one fact that could stay out of the biographies.

He walked through the Transit Museum Annex off the Concourse and then ate four burgers before returning to watch the swell and ebb of the crowds. World’s highest tides: Grand Central, New York.

He should have brought one of the books on trauma he’d been working through. Or maybe that short story collection by Butler. He liked her. She understood strange bodies, saw how they could be beautiful and grisly at the same time.

Eventually, he went back to the Tower. He knocked on the door to his apartment before he opened it, in case Bucky needed to scurry back to his room. The lights were off. He could hear the shower, which was unusual.

Bucky was sitting on the floor of the living room, though, half-damp and naked. Steve walked over, giving him some distance.

“Buck?” he said quietly.

“Tried showering,” Bucky said. His hair was a sight: spattered with water and twisted in knotted hanks. He was so _scarred_. “Didn’t work.”

Steve knew he didn’t use the shower: Bucky came out of the bathroom after wiping himself down with a wet washcloth, as far as he could tell. His hair had been a matted mess for a while now, not so much pulled back in a ponytail as it was barely restrained by a tie. He had shrugged when Steve had asked if he’d prefer a tub.

“They used to use a hose,” Bucky said now, staring into the middle distance, as calmly as if he was reciting an address he didn’t live at anymore.

Steve squatted, not so near as he would have preferred, but close enough that he was where Bucky would be looking if he was really seeing what was in front of him.

“You don’t have to use the shower, Buck.”

“You think I like taking whore baths and stinking up your place, Steve?”  

“Want help?” Steve asked shortly. Bucky had washed him too many times to count, when he was laid up or feverish. This wasn’t any different if Bucky was willing to let it be that way.

Bucky didn’t move for a moment, and then he nodded. He let Steve touch him, lead him up off the floor, into the bathroom. Bucky’s clothes from earlier in the day were piled on the floor. The shower was running cold.

“Anything I should avoid?” he asked.

Bucky shrugged. The scars were so much more vivid in the light of the bathroom. “Just don’t get the spray in my face,” he said blankly and looked at Steve. “Shouldn’t get those wet,” he said, fingers brushing Steve’s sweater, the waist of his pants, before he stepped into the shower. He held a hand over his forehead, shading his eyes from the cold mist.

Steve hesitated. When he had been too sick to wash himself, Bucky had helped him bathe, but he’d only stripped down to his shirt-sleeves, as if to show Steve he wasn’t enjoying his helplessness. He undressed, placing every piece of clothing carefully on the counter. He stepped into the shower, tensing at the cold. For once he was glad the shower was so over-sized; he didn’t have to squeeze past Bucky to get between him and the showerheads. He hadn’t given him a proper hug since Bucky had come back and he didn’t want their first embrace to be like this, with Bucky crowding himself into a corner.

“Face the door for me?” he asked, changing the temperature. Normally he liked it so hot it stung, but a gentle warmth seemed better, given Bucky’s obvious ambivalence about the water.

Bucky stepped quietly; the absence of an answer by word or gesture made Steve frown.

“Can I soap you up?”

Bucky didn’t say yes or no; he just shuffled back closer to Steve, his arm limp and heavy at his side. Maybe the silence was a better option: it would be like Steve wasn’t there.

It felt more like Bucky wasn’t there.

He wet the soap bar, rubbing it until thick suds coated his hands. He wiped Bucky’s neck and shoulders, then his upper back. Partitioning Bucky’s body, seeing it in discrete parts rather than a mass of scars kept it from being overwhelming. They hadn’t been so close since Steve had shielded him on the hospital room floor. He’d expected Bucky to be tense—he seemed so goddamn tense normally—but he was light on his feet, leaning gently into Steve’s hands.

Spreading the soap, section by section—under the arms now, then elbows to wrists—made it easier not to think about showers on base, sneaking guilty looks after they had brought Bucky back. He soaped up Bucky's hands, noting the long nails. He'd need to cut them later, if Bucky would let him.

He cleared his throat and knelt to gently scrub Bucky’s legs, thighs to ankles. The feet now, the long skinny toes. His face was hot, even though the water was just above tepid. The last time he’d knelt in a shower with Bucky, he’d—

“Let me know if this is too much,” he said, standing and gently soaping Bucky’s ass. He knew that Bucky had been using the washcloth on these more intimate areas, so he hardly needed much scrubbing. He tried to touch him efficiently, smearing suds between his thighs. He weighed the merits of getting Bucky to turn around versus reaching around to soap his front. He didn’t want Bucky to feel held by someone he couldn’t see.

He suspected, though, that Bucky wasn’t seeing much right now. He reached around him anyway; it was a cheat, but Steve was getting half-hard now and he couldn’t let Bucky see _that_. Steve didn’t want to see it. Whatever Thor said, Steve’s wants betrayed all three of them, in different ways. Bucky was dissociating, for God’s sake.

The only way out was through, though, and it was best to get this done. Bucky had asked for help, for the first time since he'd come back. They could talk about it—some of it, anyway—later.

Wherever he touched, Bucky’s weight shifted into the contact, even as Steve soaped his cock. He wasn’t hard, thank God, and it made Steve feel all the more ashamed that he was.

“I’m going to rinse you,” Steve said. “Back up a little bit?” He stepped back sharply to keep their bodies apart.

Bucky acquiesced, letting Steve spread the water from the spray down his body. Soap suds slipped down, circled the drain and disappeared.

“That’s great, Buck. You’re doing great.”

He remapped all of the earlier touches; the repetition made it seem more like the steps of a plan than having Bucky in his hands in how long? If Bucky’s cock was harder the second time Steve touched him, Steve ignored it.

“I’m going to try your hair,” he said. “It might hurt.”

The answer was a long sigh. Bucky stepped back again, and Steve fended him off with a hand at the base of his spine. It was sick, the way he was reacting to Bucky’s vulnerability and the thought of Bucky _brushing against it_ was horrifying. “Stay there for me, Buck.”

Bucky started to look back over his shoulder, started to turn to face Steve. The spray would have been in his face. He would have seen. Steve hastily took him by the nape of his neck. “Stay there,” he said, voice firm again. “That’s good.” He heard himself and blushed, thinking about Bucky’s joke the week before.

He wondered how Bucky’s body could feel so loose, so limp and still be standing. Steve poured out some shampoo with one awkward hand, keeping the other at Bucky’s neck. It felt like he was keeping him upright.

“I’ve got you,” he said, keeping pressure on Bucky’s neck, feeling the knob of his spine under his palm. “You’re being real sweet today, Buck. Thank-you.” Bucky sighed, head sagging to the side, and Steve’s cock twitched. He put together the sound and sensations and _what he’d just said_ and fought not to panic.

“Just keep still for me,” he said, trying not to let his voice shake. "Just like that."

He should have wetted the hair first, but it was going to take more than one try anyway. He tried to mind the snarls, just letting the suds soak in during this first pass. He pressed more than anything else, willing the mats to soften before he tried to separate the strands. Maybe he’d need to cut them out, if they didn’t respond to his work. He took his hand from Bucky’s neck, so he could cup his hands to catch water, keep soap out of Bucky’s eyes.

He had the sudden, strange impression that Bucky would crumple to the shower floor without his grip, but he stayed upright as Steve rinsed his hair.  “That’s good. That’s real good,” he said, easing knots out of Bucky’s hair, holding sections at the base to keep from pulling at his scalp. Some snarls relaxed, while some came out in wiry knots in his hands. "All you have to do is keep still for me and you're doing great." He shampooed and rinsed Bucky’s hair twice again, repeating suds and water and praise—he tried to keep all three gentle, but not too intimate. It was easy to get lost in the motions until Bucky stepped back, leaning hard into him.

“Oh Jesus, Buck,” he said, arching his hips away, pressing his hands to Bucky’s back. Quiet and biddable as Bucky was, maybe he hadn’t noticed. Bucky leaned his neck back, his face brushing Steve’s. His eyes were closed, his mouth open. He looked like the detail of a portrait of a saint: suffering but beatific, soul already somewhere else.

“Almost done,” he said quickly. He gently took hold of Bucky’s neck and lined him up straight. “You’re doing great for me, Bucky. I’m so proud of you.” His cheeks burned, but he checked Bucky over for any remaining soap. Satisfied, relieved, he said. “I’m going to turn off the shower. Step out and get a towel.”

Bucky followed his orders. After Steve shut the shower off and stepped back into the bathroom, he grabbed a towel and tied it around his waist. Bucky was still facing away from him, thank Christ. The towel didn’t hide anything.

“I’m going to dry you off, starting with your hair,” he said, taking the towel Bucky held loosely at his side. "Just keep still for me." He wiped him down lightly, but it was the hair that had his attention even as he rubbed Bucky's shoulders. It was much softer now; he thought he had all the snarls out. He retraced the steps in the shower, willing his erection to go down.

By the time the towel was sodden, Steve thought he could risk being in Bucky's line of sight. Bucky stared into the middle-distance anyway. Steve trimmed the fingernails on his right hand, the sound of the clippers small in the bathroom. Bucky had always preferred to keep his nails short: he'd been so much more fastidious than anyone guessed. Steve told Bucky to lean back on the counter, so Steve could cut the nails on his feet. He knelt, trying to limit the range of his attention, deal with one nail at a time. 

He stood up once he was done and gave Bucky's hair a light, entirely unnecessary touch. They hadn’t made eye contact since Steve had come back to the apartment and they didn’t now. 

“Go get dressed in clean clothes, then sit in the living room,” he said and dressed once Bucky left. He hung up the towels slowly, trying to figure out what to do next. He didn’t want to send Bucky to his room when he still like this. Steve shouldn’t have let it get this far, but Bucky hadn’t reacted like this before.

But what if he had and Steve just hadn’t noticed until now?

Bucky was sitting on the couch, when he came out, not so much serene as absent. But Steve still thought he was listening, or at least part of him was.

“I’m really proud of you, Bucky. You listened real good,” he said quietly. “I want you to relax and try to get some sleep here with me, okay?” He tucked himself into the other end of the couch, giving him room. He patted the couch cushion. “Lie down, Buck.”

Bucky curled up with the soles of his feet skimming Steve’s thighs. Steve grabbed the nearest paperback—a short story collection by LeGuin—and read in the half-dark. He listened to Bucky’s breath, trying not to count the seconds of each inhale.

Eventually, he dozed. When he woke up, Bucky was gone, the other half of the couch was cold, and it was two in the morning. There was a light on in Bucky’s room, slicing under the door. Steve left the book on the coffee table and went to bed.

He sat up in the bed for a long time before it occurred to him that he'd actually have to lie down if he wanted to catch another hour or two before getting up. 

It was still dark when he woke up again, because someone was in his bed. Bucky was in his bed, leaning over him.

“Bucky, what are you—” he started, losing words as he felt Bucky’s hand at his waist, fingers slipping under his shirt.

“Stay there,” Bucky whispered. His fingers traced Steve’s stomach, feeling the muscles there tremble. He looked up, eyes flitting in the dark from Steve’s gaze to his mouth. His hand gripped, sliding up Steve’s side.

“Oh Jesus,” he said, shivering as Bucky’s thumb brushed his nipple. He sat up, cringing as the movement visibly tipped Bucky’s balance, as his fingers gripped the grooves between Steve's ribs. “Bucky, is this because of the shower? I shouldn’t’ve—”

“No,” Bucky said firmly, shifting his weight and loosening his grip. “Just lemme do this, Stevie. I’ll do whatever you like if you’ll just let—” he exhaled shakily as if the affirmation had taken all the stillness out of him, left only shivering want. His thumb made a slow circle on sensitive skin. “Just _let_ me, Steve. Please.”

Steve caught Bucky’s hand, even as he heard himself say “You don’t have to trade anything to touch me, Buck.”

“Then don’t make me,” Bucky said, his voice low, and kissed him. His mouth tasted like cigarettes; he leaned in hard, worlds away from his gentle acquiescence in the shower. A kiss like the first shot in a war.

Steve froze, guilt hot under his skin. It felt good and it felt awful. It felt like Bucky, wanting him again. Bucky, biting at his lower lip as he pulled at Steve’s shirt one-handed. He worked it over Steve’s shoulders and neck, briefly interrupting the hard kiss before pitching the shirt off the bed. His shoulders and chest felt barer than they’d been in the shower: no water or work between his body and Bucky’s, just space. And then less space when Bucky gripped his shoulder and shifted forward to bite his neck, to better rub up against him.

His cock felt so good through the material; it felt _familiar_ down to Steve’s marrow, even as he couldn’t help think about all the details that differed from being touched by Thor. Where Thor was consciously gentle, curbing his strength except in moments of release, Bucky was aggressive, all seduction by force. Where Thor pressed close, Bucky grabbed and hauled. How strange, for the feel of Bucky to be immediate and the feel of Thor to seem long-ago.

But something else was a twinge in his memory, as he reached for Bucky. Something about what Bucky had said, what they’d both said—

It was word for word, the same conversation from the night Bucky had come back in ’39. It had happened a few times over the years, Bucky spending a few months refusing to touch Steve, staying out late to chase after dames. He always came back in the end. The last time, he’d come back in the night smelling like dancehall sweat and begged Steve to let him touch him, offered him whatever he liked if he’d just let him, Steve, please. And Steve had said then what he said just now about not needing to trade, and Bucky had responded the same way, had kissed him just like that. Tasting like smoke, need, and sullen regret. _How could you let me stay away_?

All of it, word for word.

“Bucky, stop,” he said, because he hadn’t said that, that night. That night, he had fucked Bucky into the bed, trying to make him feel as used as Steve felt, and they’d both cried. This time, he took Bucky by the shoulders when he ignored Steve’s words, kept writhing in his lap. His cock was so _hard_ as his teeth scraped Steve's neck—he pushed Bucky back as he tried to surge forward. The first time their strength had matched since the helicarrier.

“I can’t do this with you, Buck,” he said, hearing the pleading in his voice. It needed to be firmer. Bucky was confused, so Steve needed to be sure.

“Why?” Bucky demanded. “I’m here, Steve, we’re finally both here,” he insisted. His voice was all wrong suddenly, all the edges misplaced, all the intonations jumbled. He kissed Steve again, groaning with frustration when Steve’s mouth kept still, kept closed. Like kissing a statue.

“I’m glad you’re here,” Steve said, turning his face away, and he meant it, “But I won’t do this with you.”

“But we did, I know we—”

“We did,” Steve said, and he felt years of touching Bucky weigh on his skin, desperation and home all at once. “But you’re not okay, Buck, and I don’t want it like this.”

“Bullshit,” Bucky hissed and pushed himself off the bed. He stood up angrily, fingers raking his scalp, ripping out hair by the roots. “It’s him. You don’t want me because of _him_.”

Steve shook his head. It was easier to be calm now, so much easier than in than in the shower. “Buck, I want you. I love you,” he said quietly. “But not like this, not now.”

“ _When_?”

“I don’t know,” Steve said, giving the same answer he had given Thor weeks ago. He wasn’t much use to either of them.

“Fuck you, you were hard in the shower,” Bucky said.

Steve took a deep breath and looked at Bucky, who had blanched after he’d spoken, like he’d revealed a secret. “…You noticed that, huh? You were paying closer attention than I thought.” He wondered for the first time what else Bucky might have pretended not to see.

Bucky flushed and clumsily ran out; his arm gouged the doorframe as he scraped by.

* * *

He had done it wrong. He had fucked up weeks of planning—decades of confused longing—for a taste of Steve’s mouth, a scant bit of friction. He would have had it all anyway, had _more_ of, all he could want, if he had just stuck to his objectives.

And he didn’t know _why_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content Warnings:  
> \- Steve makes a brief reference to almost walking in on Bucky masturbating; this leads to a consideration of how Bucky and Steve's sexual relationship began when they were pre-adolescent; the exact ages are not given.  
> -There is a brief description of how Steve masturbated as a child before Bucky showed him a different method. As an adult, Steve feels some shame regarding how early their sexual relationship began.  
> \- He recalls that Thor knows some of the details and has happily discussed his own initial sexual activity. It is unclear at what age or approximate level of maturity Thor began being sexually active.  
> \- Steve helps Bucky wash. Bucky is largely non-responsive and may or may not be disassociating at different points in the encounter. The contact is non-sexual and Bucky has consented to the help, but he is already seemingly distressed at the time his consent is given.  
> \- Steve becomes erect during the shower and experiences significant shame.  
> \- Steve issues directives and praises Bucky during the shower and immediately after. He is unavoidably, uncomfortably reminded of their sexual history.  
> \- Bucky enters Steve's bed and begins to touch him while he is asleep. He attempts to bargain for consent and Steve begins to reciprocate before realizing that Bucky is, intentionally or unintentionally, parroting an encounter they had before the war.  
> \- Steve tells Bucky to stop touching him; Bucky does not immediately comply and becomes angry after he does. He suggests that he was more aware in the shower than Steve realized.  
> \- Bucky panics in the aftermath of being rejected by Steve; the panic is not described in detail.


	8. Results

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve seeks some comfort; Thor and Bucky confront each other

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The story gets hit by some non-imagined sex and plot! Thanks for reading! Please consider commenting: I could really use some feedback.
> 
> Content Notes at the End.

Thor was scraping slime from his boots when Steven said it, holding a hand over his communication device and looking pained.

“I did something wrong.”

“The beast was quite capable,” Thor said, gesturing broadly. The glutinous remains did, after all, cover much of the street. “You adapted well as its nature became clear and led us to victory!”

“Not that,” Steven said wretchedly and went to aid Barton, who was struggling to free himself from inside a great mass of ooze. He appeared to be attempting to swim through the substance. Thor watched Steven retrieve the archer, pulling him out by the forelimbs like a new calf.

He _had_ just finished cleaning his boots and Steven was very capable at wrangling Barton. Though, clearly, he was greatly distracted.

Rescued, Barton spat experimentally on the street. The resulting saliva was a vivid green.

“Ugh,” he said and shuddered.

Steven should not have taken off his cowl so soon after the beast was defeated. His hair was now liberally streaked with slime, raked up by dripping fingers. Barton prodded a stiffening spike as Steven sighed.

“Aw, goo,” Barton said, seemingly unaware of his own unusual hairstyle.

“Thank-you, Clint,” Steven said, allowing Barton’s exploration of his hair. Thor much preferred Steven's tendency to indulge Barton over his habit of humoring Stark: Barton had struggled with the remains of a boyhood hero-worship of Steven and eventually become his comrade. Stark—not among their company in the field today—obviously had not worked through some complex feelings about Steven. The Tower currently had a surfeit of men with complex feelings about Steven.

“You all look adorable,” The Widow observed as she approached. She was the only one entirely unmolested by the viscous substance.  

“Will it make it worse or better if Hulk drops us in the river?” Barton asked, though their largest team-mate was sitting dazed on the pavement down the street. He had taken a mighty blow and made a significant divot in an abandoned armored vehicle. He looked in no hurry to stand.

“It’ll be a biohazard,” the Widow responded. “I think we all need decontamination showers after we’re done with clean-up, just in case.”

Steven nodded, his blond crest immobile. He pitched his tone for the communications monitored by Stark, who today was heeding his promises to his lady to remain unamored at the Tower. “Tony, do you still have the robots that handled that mess in the park a few years back? We’ll need the shower pods, too. I think Bruce will be up in time to use them, so we won’t need to try to wrangle the Hulk through one.”

“Good thing, too,” Stark’s voice sounded in Thor’s ear. “Jolly Green does not like bath-time. I repurposed those bots to clean the gym after you go and douse it in your man-musk, but they’ll still do the job. Expect some Stark Industries employees to enjoy your resplendent nakedness in about…ten minutes?”

“Sounds great,” Steven said, as Barton advanced on the Widow. He held his treacly arms wide.

“C’mere, Tash, team bonding time.”

“You’re just saying that because it’s got adhesive properties,” she said. “And if you come any closer, I will electrocute you.”

Thor saw no reason to delay stripping. The morning breeze was very invigorating. Perhaps it would distract Steven from whatever pained him so. If any of the other team-members joined him (Barton was by far the likeliest, now that Stark's presence on the battlefield was inconsistent), all the better: embarrassment was a sure cure for Steven’s brooding.

He started with his sodden cape.

Later, once both they and the street were clean, the team walked from the Tower helipad toward the central stairwell. Stark had promised shawarma in celebration both of their victory and their being covered by his emblems—they were unified in their borrowed clothes. Barton estimated he would serve them a dessert made of boiled tendons instead of shawarma, which also sounded satisfying.

Thor hesitated on the rooftop stairs, despite the promised feast.

“C’mon Thor, you’ll love Jello,” Barton promised as he turned on the stairwell.

“A moment, friends,” Thor responded. He watched Steven close the exterior door, shutting them away from the sky. He looked pale in the white light of the stair, drained of the warmth of sunlight. Now that their company was safely returned to the Tower, Steven had withdrawn. Drawn to the edge of spaces, the back of the line.

“You claimed that you ‘did something wrong’,” Thor said, leaning on the wall. The communication devices were long collected, along with the rest of his equipment, save Mjölnir, which had received a thorough scrubbing. It shone, as did Steven’s shield. They were matched in glory, which was as it should be.

Steven sighed, and looked after the path the others had taken. He sat on an upper step and was silent for a long moment. He held the shield to his side, cradling it like a babe.

“Bucky, he, um, crawled in my bed last night,” he said.

“That does not sound like something you did,” Thor said carefully.

Steven shook his head. “It was my fault. He asked for help with the shower and I gave him the wrong idea.”

Thor’s brow rose at the word ‘shower’ but his curiosity was immaterial.

“By helping your ill comrade bathe himself?”

“He got quiet in the shower and I think maybe he thought—I don’t know. Maybe they did things to him in the showers, I don’t—” Steven cringed, shutting his eyes against imagined horrors. “He tried to touch me and got mad when I stopped him.” He hung his head miserably, as a man condemned. “And I didn’t even _stop_ him until, until he said something he said years ago, back in Brooklyn. Word for word like he was acting out a play.”

Steve’s stare was distant, caught between years. Thor’s jaw tightened at the thought of Barnes’ attempted seduction, at Steven’s confession that he had almost allowed it.  He reminded himself that jealousy was unhelpful; it would only cause Steven more grief. He had shouldered too much in his short life.

“Sometimes I catch myself thinking he’s just someone who looks like Bucky, who read about him, but then he says or does something only we knew and that makes it worse, somehow. Even less real.” Steven pinched the bridge of his nose, pressing forefinger and thumb tightly into the skin. “I don’t want to go back,” he whispered into the shelter of his palm.

“You miss your friend,” Thor replied, kneeling a few steps below Steven. “And you carry a great burden of guilt, blaming yourself for how he has changed.” He reached up to draw the clenching fingers away, to cover Steven’s hand with his own, lay it in Steven’s lap where it would do no more harm. The skin of his brow, once freed, remained the pale white of flesh denied blood. Unnaturally fair.  “Please, let me help.”

“He doesn’t want help.”

“I am asking _you_.” Thor said, taking hold of Steven’s chin and searching his eyes.  He looked so young, so mortal, even though by Midgardian standards, he was neither.

Steve made a pained sound and surged forward. He kissed Thor unhappily, pressing close and clumsy as Thor braced one arm against the wall. He allowed the kiss, let Steven be desperate; it was a feeling he weathered often and rarely demonstrated. He could batter himself to pieces against Thor if he needed.

Perhaps this was how Barnes had kissed him and Steven was compelled to act out the past, as well.

While Thor indulged him, allowed him to crowd against his chest, Steven grew more agitated, not less. He whimpered, the lost sound in sharp contrast with his grip as he seized Thor by the hair. Fingers tugged at his braid, pulling it apart. It was distracting, and not a little dangerous. It would be easy to tumble down the steps and take him against the landing. Sometimes Steven could be soothed only by force. Thor closed his eyes as he imagined it and he could feel Steven climbing into his lap, spreading for him. When was the last time he had felt Steven’s thighs tighten around his hips, Steve’s hardening cock brush his stomach? 

He wanted him, badly, but to take advantage of his grief and guilt was no better than plying him with Asgardian spirits to lay his defenses aside.

“Steven,” he said quietly. A warning.

“I’m sorry,” was the anguished reply, but his fists clenched in Thor’s hair. He panted against Thor’s mouth as if to share the air from their lungs back and forth, leaving less oxygen behind with every pass. Closer to unconsciousness with each breath. Steven moaned, and the kiss that rose out of the sound was pure submission.

“Please?” he whispered.

It _was_ easy, as it turned out. His honor had always had its limits. He pressed Steven down against the steps—hands on his wrists, weight firm on his stuttering hips as the shield clattered down the steps below. He bit the join of Steven’s neck and shoulder, anchoring his teeth there until Steven cried out. He sagged against the steps.

Thor withdrew his teeth from Steven’s flesh to whisper into his ear. “Struggle if it pleases you.” He bit Steven’s earlobe, catching it between his teeth. Why let him hear anything but their breath, for now? He reached for Steven’s cock; the touch was light, at first, as every other was unyielding.

Steven thrashed at the touch, sweating and sensitive underneath him. But his lover sought the comfort of being restrained by firm bonds, rather than escape. He might have fought him off successfully—Steven excelled at sly techniques, had trained with the Widow to prepare for fighting bigger, stronger opponents—but this was a struggle that begged to be subdued.

When had he ever resisted Steven’s begging?

He caught Steven’s wrists in a free hand and pressed them above his head. He looked into his eyes, seeing them widen as Thor stroked his cock faster. The struggle was frantic now, coming in uneven bursts. But his beloved’s smile was guileless as he squirmed, like the confinement was an unexpected kindness. Steven’s grin was as steady as his movements were not; somewhere between panic and relief, he was the most beautiful thing Midgard had ever made.

Thor had looked forward to grappling with Steven like this, in a bruising, needy embrace. He had imagined it would be joyful. But then Heimdall had delivered the news of Steven’s injury and the bout had been with Barnes instead. This one had arrived late, as he had.

Once begun in earnest, it took little time. When Steven came, his whimpering withdrew from Thor's mouth. He hit his skull against the lip of a stair and Thor remembered gentleness. He slipped his hand behind Steven’s head to blunt the edge of the step. He licked semen from his other hand; Steven would feel guilty seeing it, once his breath slowed and came back to himself. It was best dealt with quickly.

As was Barnes.

* * *

Steve didn’t come back, but the Alien did, wearing some stupid fucking sweatpants. He saw them when he stuck his head out the bedroom door.

He had been ready to fight or beg, when Steve came back from the most recent disaster. Sick with the desire to be Bucky for him and make up for the errors of the night before. Or compound them: admit everything was a lie except how much he wanted Steve.

But it was the Alien who came through the door and it smelled like Steve’s sweat, like it had taken him between its teeth. Shaken him like prey in its jaws. Its prey, not his. Steve had rejected him and run to be eaten by this thing.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” he demanded, pushing himself into the kitchen.

“Steven is unwell,” the Alien said, and it might be wearing dumb clothes, but it had the hammer. It stayed in the doorway, all worrying, suggestive details. Its hair was in a ponytail but had obviously dried in a braid; that suggested a rush to redress. After touching Steve.

“No shit. He’s a fucking mess,” he responded, then sneered. “ _Steven_. Like you’re his fucking priest.” He didn’t mean to look for the kitchen knives. They wouldn’t do anything against the giant that breathed out Steve’s scent. But maybe they didn’t need to anymore.

“He worries for you,” the Alien said, seemingly unaware of his fatalistic strategizing. “The Midgardians will exhaust their efforts to heal you, if they have not already.” It sounded like such a pompous fucking asshole, worse than Stark in press conference footage, worse than Steve at his most morally superior. “He agrees with me that Asgard may have better results.”

“ _Results_ ,” the Soldier said scathingly. “If Steve wants me fixed so bad, why isn’t he here?”

“He is resting,” it said. Was Steve in its bed? Why was that worse than the thought of them fucking? Steve sheltering with this fucking interloper, kept safe by its lingering warmth in the sheets, waiting for it to _come back_.

The chef’s knife was in his hand as if it had been pulled from the air.

“There’s no fixing it. The guy Steve’s looking for? Doesn’t exist,” he said to the knife.

“You should put that down,” the Alien said evenly. Its hand touched the hammer.

“Fuck you,” he said cheerfully. He was calm now that he had the knife, even if it was useless. Maybe especially _because_ it was. Now for the rest. Time to piss it off. He smiled. “You think fucking Steve gives you the right to an opinion, champ? Half the guys at the Docks coulda told me what to do, if it was like that. I never woulda slept for the orders I’d get.”

He didn’t know if that was true.

The Alien’s eyes went cold. “Your jealousy makes you coarse. Steven would not approve of your attempts to be cruel, clumsy as they are.”

“You don’t know shit about Steve Rogers,” he said, and the calm of the knife was ebbing. What had the files said? Improvise. “Your brother’s a Nazi who tried to stomp Steve’s hometown. You came here because you couldn’t keep your family shit on your own fucking planet and then you only came back because someone played with your second-favorite toy while you were gone.” He licked his lips, watching the Alien tense. “Did they tell you I fucked him for old time’s sake by the river? He coughed up water and bled on the bank _while I fucked him_ ,” he enunciated. He licked his teeth. “Guess you were gone for a while, big guy. He was tighter than I remembered.”

He didn’t know if that was true either.

“Be silent,” the Alien barked. It seemed to swell with anger, with badly hidden resentment finally given free rein. Maybe it had struggled to play nice for Steve, too.

“You gonna try to tap me again with your real favorite toy?” He asked, mapping out the kitchen in his mind, tallying its resources. There was a utility knife near the lip of the sink, better-suited to his hand than the chef’s knife. Why hadn’t he grabbed that one? “I bet your brother always wanted to play with it. Bet he’d love Steve. You folks share boys like Steve or would you have to take turns fucking him?”

“I do not need Mjölnir to subdue you, craven,” it snarled, but its knuckles were white on the handle. The air trembled now.

“I know,” he agreed cheerfully. “I’m not a threat to you, champ. Know who I am a threat to, though?” The Bucky Barnes smile, straight from the Museum walls. “ _Steve_ ,” he said, thrilling at the truth of it. “Steve leaves his door open at night. Steve _trusts_ me. He might fuck you, and maybe your freak brother, too, if you make it seem like a charity case, but he _loves_ me, and he already let me nearly kill him once. Remember how he looked in that bed? All fucked up? All broken?”  The lights flickered and the air buzzed as the Alien growled. Good. Nearly there. “This is your chance to keep him safe, big guy. Alarms are gonna go off in a sec.”

No time like the present, especially for an amnesiac. He threw a bowl in the Alien’s face, then dashed forward and slashed upward as it warded off the first blow. He felt the drag against the bone. The knife was decently forged, but it wasn’t meant for this. It didn’t need to last long anyway. This wasn’t how he had planned it, but none of his plans had worked since he hauled Steve out of the river. Another slash, catching it shallowly in its thick neck. Maybe he’d get it in the gut before it killed him.

The Alien swung the hammer into his shoulder like a backhand from God. It really was like being hit by lightning, like the chair: he flew into the counter, cracking his head on the granite.

“Just tell him I went crazy,” he tried to slur, blood swelling in his mouth. He wasn’t sure how much of what came out was intelligible or just blood bubbling at his lips. The Alien wrenched a weight off his crumpled shoulder, bellowing. “ _Go on_ ,” he urged, even though the Alien wasn’t listening. It was only listening to its own rage now. Good.

The door was opening, not that it mattered.

Warmth dripped from his chin. Had he bitten off the tip of his tongue?

More sweatpants in the doorway.

“You are not worthy of him. You never were,” the Alien seethed above him.

He didn’t disagree. He wanted to say something really nasty, though, get one more blow to fall—that might do it—but then there was real lightning—that _should_ do it or at least erase this whole goddamn thing from his brain—and the world collapsed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content Notes:  
> \- Thor describes the slimy aftermath of a team battle; there's a lot of slime, folks  
> \- Thor and Steve have a sexual encounter in a stairwell that is described in detail; Steve's ability to consent is impacted (though not necessarily voided) by significant emotional distress over Bucky; he is, initially, quite aggressive with Thor (grabbing him by the hair, rubbing up against him and sitting in his lap without confirming Thor's consent first)  
> \- Thor is not concerned by the level of aggression, though he is uncertain whether the encounter is a good idea; eventually, he increases the intensity of the encounter, though he does have slightly mixed feelings about it  
> \- Thor bites Steve and encourages him to struggle while Thor holds him down; he manually stimulates Steve to orgasm while Steve struggles (but it's clear that Steven isn't actually trying to get away); the encounter can be considered an act of under-negotiated BDSM  
> \- Steve hits his head on a stair after orgasming and Thor licks Steve's semen from his hand  
> \- Thor and Bucky have an argument with Thor insisting Bucky should be taken to Asgard for treatment (it's unclear if Steve has consented to this); Bucky is immediately upset by the smell of Steve on Thor  
> \- Bucky taunts Thor and threatens him with a knife; it's clear that Bucky is hoping to goad Thor into attacking him and it is strongly suggested that Bucky is hoping Thor will kill him now that it appears Steve has restarted his sexual relationship with Thor  
> \- Bucky's taunts include crude claims about Steve's sexual history, a claim that Bucky raped Steve after rescuing him, and the suggestion that Thor would share Steve as a sexual object with Loki; it's unclear to what degree these reflect the truth / Bucky's actual opinion  
> \- Bucky threatens to attack Steve and actually attacks Thor, first throwing a bowl to distract him and cutting him twice (in the face and neck); he hopes he will give Thor a significant injury before inevitably losing to him  
> \- Thor attacks Bucky and wrenches off the injured metal arm; a hammer-blow reminds Bucky of the electrocutions he received in the chair  
> \- Bucky hits his head and believes he has bitten off the tip of his tongue; he attempts to keep goading Thor and loses consciousness hoping the final apparent lightning strike will either kill him or erase his memory


	9. Unwell

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve wakes up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, folks! Thanks for reading! So, at this point, world-building starts to really deviate from canon (in addition to who is making out with who), especially any Thor: The Dark World canon. This includes canon that the film establishes as occurring before the events of the movie. 
> 
> Content Notes at the end.

When Steve woke up, he vomited weakly, turning his head to his shoulder before anything about his surroundings registered. 

“Steven?” someone said. 

He tried to respond, but he wasn’t quite done throwing up. The vomit pooled wetly on the platform underneath him, maybe dripping on the floor below. Warm stone, softer on his back than it should be. Green in the vomit he didn’t want explained, spreading closer to his shoulder. 

Something about the vomit reminded him of Clint, which seemed like a very unkind thought. 

“What?” he asked, trying to push himself up, away from it. 

There was a hand on his chest, a feminine face out of focus above him. Like those visions of the Virgin people had: gauzy and powerful. The hand was immovable, even though its fingers were slim. “You are unwell. Please allow me to help.” 

A wet cloth wiped away the vomit, leaving behind a spicy scent. And then liquid was trailing into his mouth, not out. 

“Rinse your mouth,” the woman said firmly, holding a cup to his lips. He weakly swished liquid around his teeth. 

Then there was a bowl. It was a deep bronze, decorated in intricate knotwork, prettier than anything he’d ever eaten out of. He spat tiredly. It dribbled on his chin. Another cloth, another series of passes over his face and shoulder that banished the scent of sickness from his skin.  

The woman dabbing at his face and neck was beautiful. That registered before her individual features did. The woman who was cleaning up his puke like he was a sick kid and holding him down with no effort was  _beautiful_. Golden shades in her hair and skin; a knowing kindness in her eyes.  

“Drink,” she said, in a tone that was warm but relentless. Familiar. She pressed another cup to his lips. His throat ached as he swallowed. It tasted like flowers, like something that bloomed in snow. 

Coolness spread through him. When was the last time the cold hadn’t hurt? 

“Where am I?” he asked, looking around. The hand still pressed down as she took away the cup and looked him over. 

“Fensalir, in Asgard,” she said. She smoothed his hair: the gesture made him feel impossibly small. “My hall. You were brought here with my son, along with another.” 

He blinked, feeling stupid. “You’re Thor’s ma.” 

“Yes,” she said, and smiled kindly. Her eyes, though, were sad. “And if you promise to keep still, I will call him here. He took the crossing much more lightly than you or your…companion.”  

“Okay,” he said, not really understanding anything beyond that Thor was nearby, would be here soon.  He felt like he was in bed with a chill, waiting for Bucky to come by after school. Where was Bucky? “Can I sit up?” 

“Carefully,” she said. God, she sounded like a mom. She murmured something he didn’t catch. 

He moved gingerly and looked around the room. The space was chiefly composed of warm light, honey-colored stone, and what looked like linen. Two exits, plus a window that looked out onto a spring surrounded by rocks and greenery.  Stone walls beyond. Inside, pale fur draped over a chair. It looked something between a sickroom and a spa; it didn’t feel like a cell. A table beside the one he lay on held pitchers, cups, and phials. And the beautiful bowl with his spit dripping down the inside.

He must have looked ridiculous, sitting there in his Stark-branded sweats. His shield did, garish against the warm tones of the room—copper, amber, things dug out of the earth and tapped from trees when the world was young. At least it was there. It was the only thing the room that had proportions that seemed real.  

“Steven?” Thor came through the doorway, looking concerned but unharmed. He looked different in a room built for people his size, or near to it. Not smaller, exactly, but framed by a place in which he belonged. He made the room make sense. The woman—Thor’s mother, Frigga, she looked so  _young_ —smiled indulgently. “Be careful with him,” she ordered. 

“You were bleeding,” Steve said, remembering it as the words came out. Blood and bone jagged, visible. 

“I was, but no longer,” he replied, hugging Steven tightly. Steve was surprised to find the embrace didn’t hurt. 

“Where’s Bucky?” he asked against Thor’s chest. He was wearing clothes like what he usually wore under his armor. Dark blue fabric was soft against Steve’s face. 

Thor hesitated, and Steve felt him stiffen. “He is…stable. He attacked me just before we were transported here.” 

“What?” Steve tried to pull away, so he could look Thor in the face. Thor held firm. 

“He threatened you, then attacked me. He is under guard.” 

“ _What_?”  

Thor worked his jaw; Steve could feel it against his scalp. “I will have him brought here.” 

“Drink this,” Frigga said and pushed another cup of the cooling drink in his hand. She let him drink it himself, but he could tell Thor was considering intervening. His body was taut against him, even as he gave Steve enough room to drink. “I’m fine,” he insisted, trying not to sound peevish. “Why are we here? Is anyone else from the team here?” 

“Heimdall was attacked,” Thor said, looking grim. “Before he fell, he brought us here by the Bifrost. I believe he intended only to summon me to my father’s hall, but in his confusion, the three of us were transported here instead. You, me, and Barnes. Heimdall has not awoken.” 

“Huh,” Steve said. 

There was the clank of heavy treads. Two women in bronze-colored armor marched in, with Bucky between them. His metal arm was missing, and he was dressed in a style similar to Thor’s, in plainer grays. He looked smaller with the empty sleeve secured against his shoulder. 

Bucky looked at Steve, still held against Thor’s side, then his gaze slid to the floor.

“What the hell happened?” Steve asked, pushing himself away from Thor, needing to sit up without help.  

Bucky was silent. His hair hung loose and lank, shadowing his face. The soldiers stood behind him, their eyes flicking to Frigga, then away. 

“We don’t need an armed guard,” Steve insisted. Bucky looked lost, lopsided. He needed help, Steve’s help. 

“I am not sure that is advisable,” Thor said, watching Bucky with narrowed eyes. 

Bucky laughed softly, his mangled shoulder making a painful shrug.  

“Thor,” Steve said. “He’s my friend and he’s not going to hurt anyone.” 

“He promised me exactly that.” 

Bucky didn’t deny it. 

Steve sighed, and looked at Frigga. He bowed his head, grasping for some formality. “Ma’am, your highness, thank-you very much for your help and hospitality. Could you and your soldiers give us a moment, please?” 

She frowned, but gracefully left the room, followed by the two guards. A screen of light wavered in the doorway after they exited. 

“Buck?” he said. Bucky looked unharmed, save the hideous absence of his arm. Steve remembered blood on his face, too, dripping from a horrible wet grin. 

“He said he would—” Thor began hotly. 

“Stop,” Steve ordered. “Bucky: tell me what happened.” He used the tone that had worked in the shower: gentle, firm, surer than he felt. 

“You left,” Bucky said quietly. His tone was flat and he kept his gaze off and to the side. “You didn’t come back. It did. And it  _smelled_  like you.” 

Steve blinked stupidly at the word  _it_ , which made no sense, then tried to stay on topic. “Why did you attack him?”   

Bucky’s smile was sickly. “I just said why.” 

 _I did this_ , Steve thought as his stomach clenched. _I did this I did this_

Bucky looked over at Thor and suddenly he spoke like it was 1944. “You should probably call the WACs back in, chief. Stevie looks a little pale, like he needs a rest. Get him in that nice big bed of yours, keep him warm.” 

Thor stepped toward the door. 

“I’m staying here,” Steve said, not sure he was speaking loud enough to hear. “You can go if you want.” 

Thor stifled a sound and stilled, caught near the doorway. 

“A sleepover,” Bucky said, and he recited the next words, finally holding Steve’s gaze. “We can put the couch cushions on the floor like when we were kids.” 

“Just fucking sit down, Buck.” Steve said miserably and slumped where he sat. 

 _I did this_ , he thought. _I did all of this_.

* * *

One of his mother’s servants—Gudrun’s youngest daughter, whose name escaped him—brought in a fish stew with ale and thick bread. Barnes ignored it at first, then rolled his eyes and ate under the weight of Steven’s stare. 

He wanted to seek his mother’s counsel. He wanted to see Heimdall and coordinate with his father’s advisers to investigate the circumstances of the attack. But he would not leave Barnes with Steven. Just because he had finally shown his fangs made him no less of a threat, if Steven allowed him to bite. 

“Steve, it’s staring,” Barnes said, making a show of wiping his mouth on his borrowed sleeve. The food seemed to have strengthened his malice. “I know I’m a looker in these fancy togs, but I feel like it’s rude for it to do that when you’re right fucking there.” 

“Bucky.” Steven’s voice was like ice. “Don’t call Thor it, for God’s sake.” 

The assassin sighed and gestured airily with a spoon. 

“Christ, that’s a stupid name.  _Bucky_. He really let people call him that?” 

Steven flinched at the word ‘he,’ as he was certainly meant to.  The assassin was playing with pronouns, striking Steven with them now that he held nothing sharper than a carved wooden spoon.

“What would you prefer I called you?” he asked quietly.  

Barnes shrugged, placing his empty bowl on the floor where he sat. “I’m trying to think of an even dumber nickname. I’ll let you know when I do.” 

Steven stared into his bowl, poking at a lump of fish. 

“You gonna finish that?” Barnes asked with exaggerated insinuation

Wordlessly, Steven handed it to him. Thor growled. 

“You must eat,” he began, trying to ignore Barnes’ performance of savoring the food, licking the spoon with an insouciant tongue. 

“I’ll say,” Barnes interrupted. “You’re just rotten at taking care of yourself,  _Steven_.” He imitated Thor’s voice on the last word, with an easy mockery. He slurped Steven’s stew loudly and Thor tried not to grind his teeth. 

“Was it all fake?” Steven asked mildly. 

Barnes rolled a mouthful of stew around while he considered the question. He swallowed. “Not all of it.” He took a long swallow of ale before he grinned, licking his teeth. “I’ll tell you which bits were which if  _it_  fucks off for a while.” 

It. Thor bristled. This sneering assassin from a backward world called him  _it_. The word was clearly meant to annoy, but it was the unfounded arrogance of it all that cut the deepest. A malformed goblin claiming to be his better. 

“No more of that ‘it’ patter,” Steven said, and then paused. To Thor’s horror, Steven turned to meet his gaze. “Will you let us talk?” 

“You can’t expect me to leave you with this leering—” 

“Hey, rude words from the guy who was eye-fucking me not two minutes ago.” 

“Please,” Steven said tiredly. “I promise not to let him stab me with a soup spoon.” 

“I promise not to make out with him, unless he asks nicely,” Barnes mumbled through a mouthful of stew-sodden bread. He smiled with detritus in his teeth. 

Thor gripped Mjölnir, seeking her precision, her focus. The interloper was trying to anger him, using his base nature, his hold on Steven, and succeeding. It did him no good to continue this way. 

“The room is monitored,” he said, trying to keep his volume even and failing. “If you attempt to harm Steven, guards will intervene.” He attempted to make it sound like a fact rather than a warning. 

“If I make out with him, do they just watch?” 

“Thor,” Steven said, clearly holding onto the last scraps of his patience. “Please go.” 

Scowling, he set the remains of his meal on a nearby shelf, before walking stiff-legged to the doorway. He half-expected to hear Barnes—or whoever he was—take his bowl and lick it like a hound. He continued down the long hall, nodding at the guards who kept watch. 

“Your mother is in the courtyard, sire,” one reported. 

He grunted, unable to meet even the basic standards of courtesy. Barnes was an even more efficient goad than Stark, it seemed. Where Stark primarily aimed to amuse himself, Barnes sought to skewer; sought, above all, Steven. 

In the courtyard, his mother sat among her flowers. Blooms that could heal or harm, bless or curse, and those that simply pleased her all in violent profusion. He knew that there were gardens on Midgard that were sedate, mild things. His mother’s garden was a beautiful bit of chaos. How Loki had loved it when they were young, loved the refuge of their mother’s hall where mysteries reined, where his talents shone.  

“I am surprised to see you,” she said, pitching her voice to be heard above the central spring that gave Fensalir its name. Its surrounding rocks and greenery dominated the other half of the courtyard, but its noise infiltrated the garden’s territory. 

“Steven wishes to talk to Barnes alone,” he responded, feeling like an overgrown child rejected by his playmates. A mad thought. 

“I am surprised you allowed him this conference.” 

He grunted, as polite to his honored mother as he was to the guard, apparently. “Barnes wishes to annoy me more than he wants to harm Steven,” he said, knowing he sounded lofty and self-centered. “It was better that I left.” 

“You might consider going to see your brother, if you do not yet feel sufficiently vexed.” 

Thor sighed. “After I have conferred with Father about Heimdall. Do you see anything of the attack?” Her sight was like and unlike Heimdall’s: where Heimdall could see all things, he was hampered by his focus, by his place in time. The Queen of Asgard’s sight was unbound by time but it was a strange, mercurial power he did not fully understand. Loki was the one who intuited such things. 

His mother shook her head, betraying only mild annoyance, as if the curtains of time were less of a hindrance than his father’s obstinance. The All-Father’s stubbornness could rouse calamitous wrath in her, but the complexities of her magic were merely addressed by an elegant shrug. “It is a moment wrapped in shadows, which suggests powerful intervention.” 

“Father suspects Loki?” 

She sighed, tiredness showing in the lines of her face. “No doubt he wishes he could.” 

“How does he fare?” 

“As well as can be expected,” she said, drawing her fingers along the serrated edges of living leaves. “You father continues to refuse to let me bring him here. Leaving him to rot underneath the palace does Asgard no favors.” 

He nodded, though he knew the hated confinement kept Asgard safe from his brother’s machinations. Their mother, however, believed the bitterness in Loki’s soul could be healed and blamed the Allfather for refusing to allow her to try. 

Since his brother’s imprisonment, their mother spent much of her time in Fensalir’s halls. She returned to Asgard for what ceremonies of seeing were necessary and the palace felt empty. Her mourning for Loki made her garden grow even thicker than usual, made the thorns sharper, the air dense with warring scents. 

“I will visit him,” he said quietly, thinking of threats and the ones who loved them, who opened their arms up to be injured. “Soon.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content Notes:  
> \- Steve wakes up in what is essentially a sickroom and receives medical treatment; there is no specific description of medical equipment or techniques beyond Steve being told to rinse his mouth and drink a liquid  
> \- Steve vomits; he also spits  
> \- Steve is held down or otherwise not allowed to move several times, which he does not struggle against  
> \- There are several references to blood and injury; Bucky's arm was violently removed in the previous chapter and Steve is very upset by it  
> \- Steve starts to panic and self-blame; he also feels nauseated  
> \- Bucky refers to Thor as "it" multiple times in a clear effort to deny his personhood; he refers to Steve's Bucky as a separate person and denies that he is him  
> \- Thor thinks of Bucky in an ableist way; he uses ableist language elsewhere  
> \- Bucky taunts Thor, and to a lesser extent, Steve  
> \- Thor and Frigga discuss Loki's imprisonment and Thor thinks about its effect on their family


	10. Goddamn Sentimental

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bucky explains himself, then has some private thoughts about Asgard.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Canon continues to diverge! And pointing out a problem isn't the same as solving it. Thanks for reading! Please consider commenting: I'm actively soliciting feedback.
> 
> Content Notes at the end.

Steve watched Bucky, who wasn’t Bucky, who was.  

“I’ll tell you a true thing if you kiss me,” Bucky said. The roguish smile was grotesque; carved in his face like a mask, and then suddenly gone. 

Steve shook his head, feeling dull anger under his skin. “Already did what you asked for. If you still don’t want to talk, then we can just sit here and listen to you digest.” 

Bucky rolled his eyes. They were an illusory blue and gray: when he turned his head, it was as if Steve could see through his irises entirely. “Fine. Is there a can around here? Do Asgardians shit? I never had the balls to ask your pet alien.” 

“Don’t call him that,” Steve said sharply. He looked around the room’s warm stone walls and floor. It was like being trapped in amber and trying to look out. “That one, I think,” he added, nodding at a doorway he hadn’t seen anyone enter or exit. 

“Well if it wasn’t before…” Bucky said happily, hopping up clumsily and investigating. Steve listened to him take a long piss and hoped it really had been a bathroom. 

“Ask away,” Bucky said, coming back in. 

Steve considered a heap of questions that promised unpleasant answers. “What do you want?” 

“You,” Bucky answered cheerfully, leaning his back against the wall and sliding down into a crouch.  As graceful now as he had just been ungainly; every gesture unreal. He watched Steve with an arch smile.

“Why?”  

“You’re my mission,” Bucky answered.  

Steve was glad he hadn’t eaten. His stomach roiled. 

“And what are you supposed to do with me?” 

Bucky shook his head, placing an eloquent finger to his lips. Miming secrecy like he had slyness; all gestures meant to be seen by the very back row. “Can’t tell.” 

“Please.” The word fell out of his mouth weakly. 

Something went out of Bucky’s eyes. He seemed to relax, dropping the saucy showmanship with a shrug. He dropped from the crouch, sitting heavily on the floor. “Brooklyn.” He said it like he was repeating a magic word, like it revealed everything for the magician, but did nothing when mouthed by members of the crowd. 

“Brooklyn,” Steve repeated stupidly. “We were in New York for God’s sake. We could have taken the subway. What the hell were we supposed to do in Brooklyn?” 

Bucky bit the inside of his cheek, gnawing on himself. “That’s all I had. I’ve had worse intel, Steve.” 

“You could have just  _asked_ ,” Steve heard himself insist. 

Bucky shook his head seriously. “No, that wasn’t the plan. The plan was to isolate you, get you away from the others, then take you. Maybe you’d even think it was your idea. Take Bucky home, help him get his head right.”  

“And after that part of the plan? Just—just nothing?” 

Bucky shrugged jerkily. He looked suddenly uncertain, like Steve was pointing out a flaw he’d never considered. 

Steve stared.

“You really didn’t know what was supposed to happen after,” he said quietly. “You didn’t notice there wasn’t a rest of the plan.” He felt his throat thicken before he noticed moisture on his cheeks. Tears on his face. He wiped them, feeling so goddamn stupid. 

Bucky had been acting on broken orders, the whole time. He hadn’t even questioned that  _they didn’t make sense_. 

“I’m not your friend, Steve,” the other man said, almost gently. “Just the mess he left behind.” 

“And here I thought that was  _me_ ,” Steve said, trying not to choke. He laughed instead; something was crawling up his throat and laughing was the only way to let it out before it killed him. He wiped snot and tears from his face, wiped his hands on his sweats, only for the laughter to claw its way up again. 

“So, what’s the plan now?” he asked hoarsely, after it finally subsided. His chest ached. “Is there a plan now?” 

Bucky considered. “Couple options,” he said, “None of them great, Steve.” 

“Try me.” Steve felt like he’d never stand up from the floor at the foot of the examination table, like he’d become part of the warm stone. 

“Run away with me. They got sheep farms in Asgard? We can card our own wool.” 

If he laughed, it would start all over again.  

“Option two?” 

Bucky nodded, as if he had expected Steve wouldn’t take the first choice. “Let your boyfriend kill me—I’d prefer that over being locked up, if that counts for anything. Maybe you go back, once this thing with his guy’s sorted. Put in another tour, sell war bonds, fight robots, all that. Maybe you stay here, let your hair grow long, drink from a spring every goddamn morning.” 

“That one has a lot more detail.” 

Bucky flexed his flesh hand, watching tendons pop under the skin. 

“Seemed like the likeliest option, so it’s the one I thought through.” 

“Tell me about the sheep farm, Buck.” 

“I said I’m not your friend.” 

“Tell me about the sheep farm, guy.” 

Bucky scratched his chin. “Didn’t think much about this one,” he said. “Uh. We run out of here and for some unlikely fucking reason, your man doesn’t follow. We steal horses or whatever they have here. Ride for days. Find a farm and some sheep—I dunno how, but you won’t like me killing anybody for their homestead and livestock, so you’ll need to figure that out—and, um, we live there. I become a one-armed shepherd. You grow your hair long. You, uh, fall in love with me even though I’m not him—either him. Eventually we die.” 

As Bucky ran out of words, Steve realized he was crying again. He tried to get the snot off his face, then off of his hands. He felt like the slime monster the team had taken down—Christ, had that really happened today?—even if his spit and snot were finally running clear, everything he touched was tainted. There was no clean-up coming. 

“You’re awful attached to the idea of my hair getting long,” Steve said finally, his throat sore. 

“Why not? I make it look so good. Hell, invite your boyfriend along and we can braid each other’s hair like a buncha faggots.” 

 “Language,” Steve said, scraping his hands on the edge of the examination table. Pressing into the edge and dragging the skin over it. It could have been 1941, except it was horrible. 

Bucky bit his lip and stared at his lap. “I promise not to stab your guy again if you let me stay. Please? I won’t stab anybody at all.” 

“If you stick around,” Steve said hoarsely, looking at the scrapes on his hands. They’d soften soon and it would be like nothing had ever happened. “I’ll need to call you something, if you stick around.” 

“Call me Bucky,” he said. “It was real nice pretending to be him.” 

Steve couldn’t tell what expression his face was making. It felt strange on his face, like his skin was too tight, like the muscles were seizing underneath. “You can be Bucky if you want. But. You don’t have to. You don’t have to be anybody.” 

“That might take some consideration.” 

Steve shrugged. “Apparently, we can’t go home for a while. The fella who works the bridge is in a hospital bed.” 

“This could be home for you,” Bucky countered. “They love their martial shit here and your guy is king or something.” 

“Thor’s not my guy,” Steve said, and that didn’t feel honest. “Well. It’s complicated.” 

Bucky rubbed his abbreviated shoulder. “Did you fuck him this morning?” 

Steve blinked. It seemed like years since this morning. “Uh. I guess I tried what you tried last night.” 

“Except it worked.” Bucky’s smile was bitter; hair hung over his face, casting shadows on his skin. It was like the golden light of the room couldn’t touch him, as if it slipped away from his skin.

“I guess it did,” Steve said quietly.

“I won’t get in your way, you know. Unless you decide you really want the sheep farm and we figure out how the shearing works.” 

“Thanks, Buck,” he said, too exhausted to entertain what that meant. “For now, can you manage not to piss him off? He’s trying real hard.”  

“That ship might have sailed.” Bucky waggled his left shoulder. Something in the metal scraped at the movement, muffled under grey material. Steve winced.

“We’ll figure it out.” 

The Soldier smiled thinly, knowing that was what Steve said when he didn’t have an answer and didn’t expect one any time soon. It was a way of ending conversations; it stalled for time, rather than making promises. Even if Steve usually found a way to make it true because he was so goddamn willful. It meant he didn’t have any solutions yet.

 “If you say so,” he said. “Just remember, Stevie—execution over imprisonment, alright?” 

* * *

He could be Bucky, if he wanted. Not  _really_   Bucky, but someone Steve was willing to treat like Bucky while still accepting it was a sham. With the mission essentially fucked at this point, it wasn’t such a bad alternate objective. 

Thinking about the Mission, about the problematic parameters Steve had pointed out made his head hurt, so he tried not to. Pleasing Steve? That felt like the opposite of pain.

Besides, it would piss off the Alien, which may well be a he, given its aggressive masculine posturing, but it was still a fucking Alien. He had not entirely given up the hope of getting Steve away from it—him,  _fine_ —but things would need to subtler from now on. 

The old Bucky had thought he was subtle. The Soldier had considered subtlety a useful habit, like keeping snow in his mouth during long waits in cold conditions so the clouds of his breath couldn’t betray him. Whoever he was trying to be now should balance the confidence of the one with the pragmatism of the other. Trying to be Bucky meant incorporating some faults Steve would like. Cockiness was an obvious choice and he could ape a swagger all he wanted—the imbalance from the missing arm all but guaranteed that—while still being extremely fucking careful. 

Despite what he’d offered Steve, the sheep farm wasn’t really an option. Steve wouldn’t give up the fight—that’s what the Alien got wrong when his eyes went soft, as he explained the apparently endless family history of the palatial lodge they’d landed at. Places his brother had laid precociously sociopathic traps for him when they were children and, one time, apparently left him hanging upside down from a snare for hours while the household was distracted by some kind of fire.  

Adorable. 

The Alien obviously had domestic aims in mind for Steve, someday, and getting Steve to bunk with him in his childhood bedroom had been the immediate version of that goal. Presumably to use Steve to check for any pitfalls left over from his charming childhood.     

It had been  _delightful_   when Steve had said no, haltingly explaining that he’d prefer to sleep alone, all mottled white and red like he had a fever. While they were in the suite of rooms, no less, standing in front of what these people apparently considered a child-sized antechamber, outside the bedroom proper. Steve’s embarrassed rejection had actually echoed. 

“I don’t know, Steve,” he’d piped up. “The way this place is designed, we could probably fit all three of us in one room pretty nicely.” 

The Alien tensed, biting down on a reply.

And that was his barb for the hour. Less obvious antagonism of the Alien meant keeping another timer in his head in addition to how often Steve should eat. They weren’t in the tower anymore and the cost of Steve being weak here, rather than being weak in a cushy skyscraper, outweighed the benefit of annoying the heir to the throne. 

It would be time to remind Steve to eat in thirty-six minutes, but with the way these people approached hospitality there would already be peeled grapes on hand by then.

“You would fit better in the cells,” the Alien grumbled. His voice sounded like rocks grinding together—that couldn’t be good for those white teeth. 

“He said he won’t hurt anyone. I believe him and I’ll take responsibility for him,” Steve said firmly. “I’m not locking him up, not again.” Bless him. 

He barely managed to keep from asking what Thor’s obviously sainted mother was doing with a dungeon in her basement because he still had a good fifty-eight minutes on the timer. Besides, given the youngest son’s hobbies, who knew what the woman did when she wasn’t swanning around or mollycoddling Steve. The people here must have something about blondes with excellent posture. Strange, because they already had so many of them.  

She fussed over Steve at dinner, too, in a massive, over-decorated hall. She patted his hair and he could tell Steve was blushing to the tips of his toes. Being mothered—let alone by a pretty blonde sawbones—would have particular connotations for Steve and it might be a potential point in the place’s favor he hadn’t anticipated. At least Steve’s shoulders softened when she spoke to him : her attention soothed the tension from the prince's bedroom.

Finally divorced from the godawful headaches, the memories were useful. They were still partial and jumbled, but they explained why he knew things, like how the Queen was almost as dangerous a lure as her son. Pretty and pampered, she was no Sarah Rogers—now that had been a beautiful woman, somehow even more so because she’d had hands chapped red from repeated washing and grey in her hair—but Steve was so goddamn sentimental. 

Maybe he needed to get Steve out of here sooner that he’d thought. The place was like a trap. Two busty, attentive blondes—when had Steve started attracting his own kind? The man liked brunettes, had  _always_ preferred brunettes—and long tables full of soldiers companionably eating unbelievable quantities of food. Art every-fucking-where. It was like they’d known Steve was coming. 

Somehow, the Alien provided a useful opportunity to extricate Steve from this Viking summer camp. 

“I must hie to the city to meet with my father,” he said. Christ, he talked funny. “Heimdall’s attacker must be discovered.” 

If the Soldier—Bucky the Soldier?—suggested they go with him, the Alien would immediately disagree. He looked over at Steve, who was finally taking in some fucking nourishment and swallowing some more fish. Baked this time. These people liked fish. Fish and Steve. 

“We should come with you,” he said earnestly to his over-sized boyfriend, because Steve Rogers was nothing if not reliable. And handsome. And stupid. And perfect—goddammit, he’d gotten distracted. 

“I think it would be best if you were to remain here,” the Alien said diplomatically. “You are still resting from the crossing and there is no better healer in Asgard than my mother.” And their unwanted guest would have fewer people to murder, presumably, while she messed around inside his head, to  _fix_   him. 

“Shouldn’t she be coming to see your guy, them?” The timer restarted. 

The Alien’s mouth twisted. “You make a good point,” he said grudgingly and drew himself back up. “Mother? Do you plan to journey to the city as well?” 

She actually looked from the Alien to Steve and back again. These people were trying to adopt Steve, he was sure of it. “I believe I must,” she responded. “If that is what must be, I think your companions had best join us.” 

He could have kissed her. She was gorgeous, after all, and despite both being big, blonde, and stacked, mother and son somehow didn’t look all that alike anyway. Not that the Alien was unattractive, but flirting with him was meant to annoy, not seduce. Theoretically, it could be another way to get him away from Steve, but Steve had never been the jealous type—he was too surprised anyone wanted him, the fucking idiot. Besides, he had no illusions that anyone—even someone who hadn’t tried to kill him twice now—would choose him over Steve.   

So, flirting with the Alien was strictly for amusement’s sake. 

He smiled, trying to look only a little pleased with the unexpected support from the woman who so clearly wanted to add Steve to her collection of pretty soldiers.

“We will ride in the morning,” the Alien said. His teeth were grinding again. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content Notes:  
> \- In general, Bucky's behavior is obsessive and unkind; he does finally stop referring to Thor as "it" midway through the chapter,  
> \- Bucky attempts to trade Steve physical intimacy for information; it's unclear to what degree this is a joke  
> \- Bucky makes a crude comment about Asgardian bodily waste disposal  
> \- Steve feels nauseated; later he has a bout of hysterical laughter and some crying; there's a fair amount of tears and mucus  
> \- Bucky uses a homophobic slur; this is very likely a moment of internalized homophobia  
> \- Bucky tells Steve he would prefer to be killed than imprisoned in Asgard  
> \- Bucky characterizes Loki as sociopathic; he's really not qualified to make that designation  
> \- Thor grinds his teeth multiple times


	11. Spun From Myth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve panics and receives some advice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OK, so I'm taking some artistic license with botany: there are two different flowers called Baldr's Brow, and the one that gets mentioned in this chapter apparently does not have a strong smell, though it is related to chamomile.
> 
> 'Ware the Content Notes if you have any issues with reading about self-harm.
> 
> Thanks for reading! Please consider leaving comments or kudos.

Freed from an interminable conversation with the steward, Thor sought out Steven after dinner. What remained of Barnes’s shoulder was being inspected by one of his mother’s servants, an artificer she had lured from Nidavellir. Two guards accompanied the strange pairing; one had professed a keen interest in the arts of the dwarves, so hopefully the other could be counted upon to focus on Barnes. 

Thor did not regret the loss of Barnes’ arm, but there was no reason the man should suffer. No reason he should go unwatched, either.  

Steven—finally—was without his smirking shadow. He stood in the hall, looking out a window into the courtyard. The line of his neck and shoulders was tense; he was still wearing the clothing Stark had given them this morning. Perhaps bathing and changing into the clothes of Asgard would soothe him: the material and cut would be far superior to the borrowed Midgardian clothing. And Steven would look so fine in them. 

“Steven,” he began, and the words broke off as he turned. His beloved’s face was deadly pale with tiny points of flushed skin in his face. He looked like a man taken by fever, half-swooning with it. How had he hidden this during dinner? 

“I must take you to my mother—” he began. 

“No,” Steven said quietly. “I’m not sick, Thor. Just.”  He sat heavily on a bench and stared out, unseeing. How long had he faced the window with blind eyes? Thor knelt in front of him, reminded unavoidably of their assignation on the stairs. when had he last seen Steven truly smile? 

Before Barnes had arrived. Before Thor had left Midgard. 

“I thought I was helping him,” Steven said, his voice dull. “I wasn’t. Christ, I think I made it worse.” 

He squinted, trying to understand. What had Barnes said once they had been left alone? “You’ve done nothing wrong.” 

Steven shook his head and his face twisted with an expression of nausea. He retched softly, fending Thor’s attentions off with one hand while he gripped the bench with the other.  After the gagging stopped, Steven spoke quickly and quietly. “No, I’ve done plenty. Keeping him locked up with me just made him more confused, better at hiding it. I should have been out there, asking questions, chasing HYDRA down. And then I–I—”  

He made a strangled noise in his throat, gripped the bench with both hands and he hit his head solidly on the wall behind. Then again with much greater force.  His back arched sharply as the back of his skull struck the wall with a horrifying thud. Thor jumped to cradle Steven’s head as he rolled forward, about to strike again.   

Steven’s scalp was hot to the touch, with blood flooding underneath the skin, but seemingly unruptured. Blood dotted Thor’s fingers, but it came from many small abrasions rather than a single great wound. It was still sickening, seeing crimson flecks in the golden hair. 

Thor clutched at Steven, still seeing the line of his thrashing in his mind’s eye. He held him tighter. He should check him more thoroughly for signs of injury. He needed to let him go to do that. He needed to let him go. 

He had seen this, once before, after a mission gone terribly wrong. There had been a great fire and young lives had been lost. Later, after Clinton had been removed to the hospital, Thor had turned down the antiseptic-smelling hallway to see Steven punching himself in the head. The blows had held such force that Thor had tackled him, reacting as if Steven was an enemy in the field. He had crushed him against his armor, babbling apologies and trying not to scream. Steven had shuddered against him, smelling of soot and misery. 

When he drew breath against Steven’s hair, he could swear he smelled smoke. 

“I think I need to go to bed,” Steven said dully into Thor’s chest. 

“You will allow me to examine you,” he said, fighting to keep his voice firm. It was a terrible balance: Steven’s strength pitted against his constitution.  

“I should have made them tell me what they did to him,” Steven said. “I should have hunted them down.” 

“You have my oath that we will raze their forts and force their secrets from them.” He knew he could not keep Steven here forever, not once Heimdall was well. His fingers gentled and he inspected his beloved, trying to look with the chirurgeon’s calm eye. His mother was in her rooms, likely using her magic to forewarn his brother about their journey. He would call the next guard he saw to bring her.  “But first I will escort you to the infirmary.” 

Steven did not resist as he was led down the hall. 

* * *

 

That night, Steve lay in the dark guestroom. Technically, he was in one of several guestrooms in a larger guest suite. It was the kind of room you gave to a member of someone’s retinue. He’d always known Thor came from luxury—he was a prince, he thought nothing of obscene amounts of wealth—but seeing it was different. It was different from the shocking wastefulness of the future, and from Tony’s strange mix of threadbare t-shirts and bespoke formalwear. Everything seemed to be made out of precious materials and impossible opulence and honestly, it was making him panic a little. Even the tangle of blankets and furs he’d rolled himself around in the bed seemed like they were spun from myth.  

This place was so beautiful, it hurt his eyes. It was like something he struggled and failed to adequately remember from a dream. And Thor had called it humble, more than once.  

What would the team have thought, if they'd been brought here? Tony would have pretended to be unimpressed, while itching to look at the guts of the technology. Bruce would have taken it in with his usual appearance of calm, maybe smiled at the solidity of the place. Asgard looked possibly Hulk-proof. Natasha would have observed everything carefully, skeptically. Clint would have drank too much mead because he missed his dog and gotten whatever the Asgardian equivalent of a stomach pump was.

And Thor would have been so excited to _show_ them everything.

He’d hurt Thor’s feelings when he’d asked to sleep alone and now, they were all sleeping in separate rooms in a guest suite—in a guest wing, one of several, holy God almighty—when Thor had obviously been looking forward to sleeping in his childhood bedroom in his mother’s house. Steve knew that Frigga was a different kind of parent than Odin, less distant and not given to measuring her children’s worth: because of that, this place was special to him and Steve had kept him from enjoying it. 

He wished he could text Sam.  

He was itching beneath his skin. His head didn’t hurt anymore; that had been hours ago. Thor had led him to the room, still watching him with worry and just a little bit of fear that Steve knew was his fault. He hadn’t done that in a long time. It would have been embarrassing if Thor hadn’t looked so horrified. 

At least Bucky hadn’t seen. He’d always hated when Steve did that; he’d cried the last time it had happened, had shaken him with more force than Steve had used in the first place. It had been two weeks before Bucky had left for basic training; Steve had lost a commission after getting sick and turning in garbage work, done at the last minute. He just hadn’t been able to stop himself. Bucky had come home from work and tried to slip his hand up Steve’s shirt; when Steve had shied away, looking guilty, Bucky had whitened and stripped him until he found every single scratch. And then the shaking had started; first Bucky trembling on his own, then him grabbing and shaking Steve with desperate fingers. 

He’d made Steve swear he’d never do it again and he’d managed that pretty well until the train. Then, he’d found he could hit so much harder. 

He hadn’t done it that much in the future. There always seemed to be someone watching. He’d hit the bag instead and gone jogging and wished he could just give himself a good kick in the ankle. In some ways, it had helped to be reminded he was the property of the United States Army, on permanent loan out to himself. 

He was still in his sweats, wrestling with the fabrics and furs in the bed. There were tunics and trousers in shades of blue laid out for the following day and more to take with him. Boots, belts, pins—he wondered whose closet had been ransacked so he had something to wear. It was all  _so fancy_ , like everything in this maximalist paradise. 

The walls were still plenty solid, though.   

He’d done push-ups, and squats and other body-weight exercises until he ran out of new ones to try. He’d flopped on the bed and tried to sleep. 

 He supposed he could go through the list of exercises again.  

What he really wanted to do was ask to see Bucky’s shoulder, ask what the smith had said. Thor had described the man as something between an artificer and a roboticist and when he’d been pointed out at dinner he’d looked like a shorter, more heavily bearded Tony. Touch him on the shoulder, like he hadn't dared in the infirmary. Steve wasn’t going into anyone’s rooms, though, not after the last time he’d woken up in Thor’s bed and hurried to his own room to see the fight from the hospital one step closer to being well and truly finished. 

There was less of the arm now: Bucky's sleeve had been pinned right up to the shoulder when he came back earlier that night. Steve wondered if Bucky had kept the arm or if it was still with the smith. There was less of him every time Steve looked.

As quietly as possible, he took his shield and left the suite. It wasn’t that he felt unsafe: the shield was more company than weapon, in the night. The weight felt good on his arm. The lack of doors made it easier to stay quiet and it seemed he had unrestricted access to the house. Mansion. Palace.  

It was easy to find his way; even without his enhanced memory, there was the sound of the spring and the smell of the garden. He passed guards occasionally, who seemed to find him unremarkable. The courtyard—if you could call it that: it was half grotto, half forest, in the middle of a palace—opened up to the strange sky like a mouth. He was surprised to see how many of the plants were bio-luminescent, giving off light that seemed to breathe.  

Maybe if he asked, they could come back here after Heimdall was well. Maybe Bucky would let Frigga help, if Steve asked. There was a softness that sometimes peered out of Bucky’s eyes since their talk and Steve knew he shouldn’t take advantage of it, but if he’d just agree to let them  _help_ — 

“It’s a fair night,” a calm voice said.  

“Oh Jesus—” Steve said shortly and spun to see Thor’s mother sitting in the garden. “I’m sorry, ma’am, I didn’t mean to disturb you.”  

“You haven’t,” she said. Her hair was down; it seemed impossibly long and reflected the plants’ glow. “You may sit, if you like.”  

“Oh, um. Thank-you.” He laid down the shield and sat next to it, moss soft underneath him. He had no idea what to say. 

“You’ve fought against my son,” she said serenely.  

He frowned. “Not directly, ma’am, but against forces under his command.”  

She smiled, and it reminded him of Thor. “I might have meant one of his brothers.”  

He blushed, feeling like he was one of the features of the garden. A mushroom that glowed dull red. “Oh, a few times. But only ever sparring, ma’am. I don’t think we’ve ever actually…attacked each other.”   

There had been a mind-control thing a few years back, but the sorcerer had aimed him at the Hulk, so he had just broken dozens of bones and never actually fought Thor toe to toe. When they sparred, Thor almost always won in the long run, so at least Thor wouldn’t have been in danger, even if Steve had done anything other than bounce off the Hulk and get smashed through a sidewalk.  

He frowned, the memory of that blow recalling another. "Wait. He hit my shield once: it blew out a stretch of forest. I hit him first, though." He traced the surface of the shield and felt bashful. "Only fair, I guess. He's not easy to calm down, your son."

She nodded and changed the subject with a grace he didn’t quite understand. She was still blunt—just like Thor—but the tone was so gentle. “My husband will be watching you in Asgard. He sees your people as a reminder of our arrogance and folly. He fears you will stoke the same flaw in Thor,” she said, smoothing her hands over her long skirt. “He believes he has already lost one son to pride and he fears to lose another.”  

“I’m sorry,” Steve said, not knowing what else to say to a woman whose youngest son was imprisoned, whose eldest risked his life on another world. And she had other sons who had died long before Steve was born. He knew Thor had half-brothers, too, ones Frigga hadn’t raised, but had welcomed all the same. Thor talked about them much less frequently, though; they were one of the very few topics upon which Thor was reticent, unless he’d been drinking.   

She reminded him suddenly of Mrs. Daly, who had lost four sons in the Great War, only to have the youngest land in Sing Sing after killing a man in a barfight. She was still visiting him once a week when she suddenly took sick and passed. How did that kind of loss feel? When he’d woken up in the future, it had been one giant negating stroke  through everything he’d known, except for Peggy, who had had a whole life while he was gone and once he came back, she only remembered him half the time. How would it feel to bear that much loss doled out over centuries, or even longer?  

“You are very sweet, in addition to your other merits,” she said quietly. “I can see why he loves you.”  

Steve hung his head. It was obvious who Thor received his complete immunity to embarrassment from.  

“I will be happy to tell the Allfather that you are Thor’s beloved, and not his worshipper,” she said. She regarded him, as if judging the quality of her work in the sickroom. Both times. “May I speak frankly with you about your friend?” 

His face went hot. “Of course,” he said. 

“The sort of healing he needs cannot be forced.  I do not believe he will allow himself to be healed. Not even to please you.” She looked sad as his heart clenched in his chest. “That may change in time.” 

He found himself nodding dumbly. All this splendor and still no hope. 

“Do you see those little white flowers by your feet, Steven?” Another abrupt change in topic. 

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, completely confused. They looked like daisies. Were they daisies?  

“They grow on Midgard also,” she said, a teaching tone entering her voice. “Some of your people call it—and some plants like it—Baldr’s brow, after my son. He was very fair, like you.” She sighed: he saw her exhale but the sound was lost in the spring. “And there are no flowers named for his twin, though he was a beautiful boy in his own right.”  

He wanted to hug her, which seemed inappropriate. He would ask Thor to hug her tomorrow, if that wasn’t unconscionably weird. 

“It’s a very common flower, even considered a weed, in some lands. But I am very fond of it. It is humble and very hardy. I admire it. Will you carry out a task for me, oh hero of Midgard?” Her tone had turned arch and she sounded almost like Natasha, like Peggy, like every woman he’d met who had been too smart for him. Including his mother.  

“Of course,” he said.  

“Take some of the flowers with you when we leave. You might consider pressing some, but I would appreciate it very much if you pinned a few to your breast when we go to court tomorrow,” she said and stood. Her shifting skirts revealed a carved wooden seat. It was the first ugly thing he’d seen in Asgard, like it was something carved by a scout learning to whittle. “Good evening, Steven. I hope you sleep well.”  

“Uh, ma’am?”  

 She turned back to look at him, watching him with a gentle eye.  

“Thank-you very much, ma’am.”  

“You’re welcome, Steven,” she said, and walked away, her dress gleaming in the night.  

Feeling a little foolish, he plucked several of the flowers. They looked so small in his hands. They really did look like daisies, but they smelled a little like chamomile, like sleep.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content Notes:  
> \- Steve feels nauseated; he gags but does not actually throw up  
> \- Steve self-harms using blunt force; later reference is made to him using his fingernails in the past  
> \- Remembering a past incident of Steve self-harming, Thor briefly references a fire and the deaths of children  
> \- In one of Steve's memories, Bucky panics in response to Steve self-harming and grabs and shakes him roughly  
> \- Steve remembers being under the influence of mind control and being very badly injured after attacking the Hulk  
> \- Steve recalls a neighbour who had several sons die in the First World War, with her last living son imprisoned after accidentally killing a man in a barfight


	12. Whispers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thor, Steve, and Bucky travel with Frigga's retinue from Fensalir to Asgard. Their arrival sparks some interest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's Tuesday! Oh, and in an effort to get some involved in some fandoms (primarily Marvel) I have a tumblr now. Find me at [tolarianfic](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/tolarianfic).
> 
> So, today's update features a lot of Asgard, as well as Thor and Bucky figuring out how not to murder each other, on an ongoing basis. Read on to see how well that goes.
> 
> Content Notes at the end. Thank-you for reading! Please consider commenting or leaving kudos? Feedback means a lot to me.

Bucky—that was the name: it was stupid and it was his. Steve  _gave_  it to him—Bucky knew how to ride a horse. That didn’t mean he liked them. The Soldier was trained to make use of any potential improvised assets while in the field. He could ride a camel as competently as he could steal a car or pilot a plane. He just looked goddamn uncomfortable while he did it. The missing arm certainly didn't help, even if riding a horse was mostly in the legs.  

Naturally, the Alien and his beautiful mother sat in the saddle with a remarkable grace.   

He’d brushed up on his Norse mythology while staying with Steve in the high-rise. Sadly, the bit about the Queen driving a chariot led by cats appeared to be a lie. If Thor turned out to have a wife, that would certainly make things interesting. She’d probably love Steve. 

A few comments from the mother and an infuriating, meaty hand on Steve’s back from the son had improved his posture immensely. After a few hours in the saddle, he looked like he belonged in this fucked-up fairy tale baggage train. He wore their clothes, smiled at the apparently endless number of songs they all seemed to know, and when they rested in the early afternoon, he sat at the Alien Queen’s side like a favored pet. 

Some kind of big golden dog, maybe, short-haired, with the fur of its ears smooth from being touched so often.   There was stubble on his chin, creeping up his cheeks: it looked like it was just starting to turn soft. 

Bucky knew his healing factor should be keeping him from getting too saddle-sore but he was convinced his ass was aching and he was dressed like some Renaissance Faire asshole. He had a vague recollection of killing some Silicon Valley CEO at one in the early ‘90s and the only vivid detail was the stupid outfit he’d worn to get close to the guy and fulfill the mission objective to butcher him. Nether the objective or the outfit had been his usual style at all. The outfit—and the CEO’s body, come to think of it—had been an acceptable target for his ire, because he couldn’t question the mission. The getup had looked a lot like what he wore now: the material was way more expensive and the cut was flattering enough but it was wrong in the way that everything here was wrong. Everything but Steve.    

It would take a lot of improvising to salvage this. Steve couldn’t realistically be separated from the Alien until they got back to Earth: until then, the mission was to make authentic connections with Steve, not get caught watching him sleep—once he finally went to bed, the fucking night owl—and only piss off the Alien within acceptable parameters.  

Except he knew now that the mission wasn’t real. It wasn’t an order, it wasn’t even a coherent goal. Separate Steve from anyone who threatened their closeness, take him to a neighborhood they hadn’t inhabited in some seventy years and then  _nothing_. The daydream about the sheep farm had more internal logic and he’d imagined that on the spot.

Mostly.  

He’d never questioned that there wasn’t a next step. He hadn’t understood that there was something missing. Even after Steve had pointed it out, it had taken time to sink in. He knew now, but he didn’t really  _understand_. Belief in the mission would still buoy him up, send his thoughts in dangerous directions unless he was careful.

His head wasn’t right. And if these people fixed it, he wouldn’t exist. Maybe Steve would get back an approximation of the old Bucky, but he knew it wouldn’t be him: he was the mistake, an error with a point of view. 

It wouldn’t be so bad, giving Steve what he wanted. But an animal self-preservation instinct balked at it: the urge to please Steve met the need to live and they shorted each other out. 

The old Bucky would have sacrificed himself, would have gracefully hopped in whatever version of the chair they had here, would have winked as the techs put the bite plate between his teeth.   

This one couldn’t.  

So, it was tempting to default to the mission and its anamorphic reflection that made it seem sensible. He had to watch out for it. The mission’s sense of bone-deep conviction was as addictive as it was illusory.  

At least the mission’s many calculations gave him something to do other than watch these people fawn over Steve.  

Steve wore their clothing and like every stupid uniform the Army and SHIELD had foisted on him, he made it look beautiful. Dark greys and blues that brought attention to his coloring, the gold of his hair, the blush in his cheeks. Blue in the eyes no fabric could match. And those fucking flowers pinned to his chest.  

He had heard one the soldiers, a pretty, tall woman ask Steve about them on the ride. Apparently, the Queen had asked him to wear them: little white flowers from her garden, so plain and yet perfectly Steve.  

The soldier had reacted like he’d been told to wear a fucking crown and now there were whispers among the ranks. He knew they were talking about Steve; the old Bucky had plenty of memories of watching people watch Steve, balancing rank jealousy and pragmatic awareness. Not that it had done either of them any fucking good. Bucky had died—or descended to whatever ironic hell  _this_  was—and Steve had gotten himself frozen and thawed out to face even more fucking danger.  

The soldiers were talking to each other as they rested now, to the servants that were along to pad out this ostentatious company. Steve was pretty at the Queen’s side and—oh fuck—the Alien was coming over.  

“How do you fare?” he asked. Probably under the same orders from Steve to make nice. He wondered how a prince had landed a scrappy little proletarian like Steve. The most establishment thing he’d ever done before demanding his big stupid chance to die for his country in 1941 was campaign for LaGuardia. 

Knowing how it happened might help undo it. If it could be undone. But there was no fucking mission. There was only staying near Steve. Anything else was an impossible op. 

Bucky bit back an honest answer to the Alien’s question— _going_ _bugfuck_ _crazy watching your people eye Steve like he’s riding a donkey into fucking Jerusalem_ —and then a rude one. Several rude ones. What did that leave? Oh shit, he’d circled back to honesty.  

“Wondering why your folks looking at Steve like that.”  

To his surprise, the Alien sat down. It was strange having him so close—Christ, he was so goddamn big—without starting to pass out from a lack of oxygen. His shoulder ached: he knew it was just phantom pain.

The funny little tech back at the palace had inspected him with an unimpressed squint and taken out the jagged remainder of the arm, leaving only the scraped socket. He had the hunk of titanium in his bags: after rapping on the socket to get his wandering attention, the tech had asked if he wanted it for sentimental reasons.  

He didn’t anticipate needing any additional maintenance, so long as the Alien kept his mitts to himself.  He sure was sitting politely, looking thoughtful. 

“He wears a token of some significance,” the Alien said finally.  He didn’t elaborate and Bucky fought to keep from rolling his eyes.  

“What’s the significance?” he asked, biting off a hunk of the bread roll he’d been handed earlier. Chewing would keep him too busy to get mouthy. Steve wasn’t watching—he was busy listening attentively to the Queen, boy scout that he was, these days—but he was doing aces on the objective of not pissing off the Alien. Why fuck it up now?  

The Alien frowned. “He wears the symbol of my brother.”  

Bucky swallowed. “What, the one from New York?” The last time he’d checked, Steve hadn’t been sporting any horns. Just those goddamn flowers and what did they have to do with a wannabe Nazi? 

“No. Another.”  

“Christ, how many do you have?” he heard himself say. Sixty minutes on the timer. He ripped off another chunk of bread—was there honey in this? These people were obsessed with honey. No wonder they liked Steve so goddamn much.  

“Not many left who still live or walk free,” the Alien said, looking somber.  

Well he didn’t know what to fucking say to that. All the old Bucky’s siblings were dead too, but he didn’t bring it up in conversation. He kept chewing. 

“The flower is associated with Baldr,” the Alien continued. “My eldest brother, long-dead, he is promised to return when Ragnarok comes. When this world ends. Steven resembles him: not in the exact details of their features, but more broadly.”

He sighed, watching Steve. His voice went tender, the way it did when explaining his little brother’s childhood death traps. This fucking guy.   “Baldr was beautiful, fair of face, golden-haired, but his glory was more than that. Baldr shone. He was Asgard’s best, in beauty and spirit alike. He made the world around him, the people who followed him,  _better_   than they had been before.”  

“Some of that does sound familiar,” Bucky said flatly. This did not bode fucking well. “The whispering going to keep up?” Another bite. 

The Alien nodded grimly. “My mother bade a beautiful mortal wear Baldr’s token, grown in the Queen of Asgard’s garden. He rides to the hall of Odin in a time of crisis, armed not with a sword, but with a shield, one that withstood the might of Mjölnir. He rides near the head of a host of the Queen’s court. The whispers will increase. It is the stuff of legend and for some reason my mother has encouraged it. I know not why and she will not explain herself.”  

Bucky squinted, and shoved the wet bread in his mouth into his cheek to ask the obvious question. 

“And how do they know that little detail about the shield? And when the fuck did you hit him?”  

The Alien scowled and replied shamefacedly, “We battled over a misunderstanding, once. I have spoken much of his deeds during my time here.”  

He swallowed. “Aw, fuck me _._ _You_   did this.” He’d talked Steve up to these people, added another fucking population of people to the universe who looked at Steve and only saw the shield and the stars and the goddamn newsreel smile. 

“...I am partly to blame, yes.”  

Bucky knew fuck-ups. It was nice that the Alien could fail at something other than murdering him. “I don’t like this,” he said.  

“We are in accord.”  

When they returned to the road, he rode closer to Steve. He kept his attention with missing bits of recovered memories, asking what had happened to the little blue tie Steve had worn for his confirmation, who it was that had given the old Bucky a black eye on his fourteenth birthday.  

It didn’t drown out the singing.  

* * *

Thor had never expected to think of the interloper as an ally, but in the face of machinations he could not understand, the assassin was an unlikely compatriot.

He remained a blot on Steven’s life, openly grasping and greedy for his attention now, but the man could be trusted on a single point: he wanted to take Steven back to Midgard.  

The Allfather’s refusal to use the Tesseract for travel or open the Bifrost without Heimdall’s supervision was, in that sense at least, a blessing. Barnes had to behave at the moment. 

His mother had no such limitation. What did she intend? She blessed Steven with her attention and affection—something he had dreamed of, once—but Thor could feel unseen wheels turning as she treated him like a prince returned rather than an honored visitor. Loki had learned his subtlety from their mother. What was her aim, turning Steven into a part of a legend?  

The flowers were one thing: at face value, they were a kind gift, a show of favor. But they portended more, as did the celebratory mood of their company: soldiers held banners, servants wore flowers. Frigga rode at the train’s head, resplendent; Steven at her right hand, looking beautiful and brave. They were something out of a tale.  

He had hoped, at first, that it was merely jealousy that caused the weight in his chest: seeing Steven riding in his own rightful place in the company, with Barnes a shadow on his other side. But it was not so simple as jealousy. 

As their party rode toward the city, his heart grew heavy: the soldiery watched Steven like a commander. And he was one, of that there was no doubt. But why could they see it already? Did his mother shape their thoughts with her Vanir magic, as she orchestrated their ride to the city through small towns and villages?   

What was she doing? He had asked her, while Steven hung back to speak to Barnes. But she had smiled and refused to answer.  

No doubt their arrival would reveal the next step of the plan, but that was no comfort. He resented the relief of conspiring with Barnes, knowing that he too mistrusted the events of the day. He wondered how to caution Steven without souring his relationship with his mother.  

He had caused some of this with his high praise of Steven, his recounting of battles in which Steven’s wisdom and bravery won the day. His insistence to all who would listen that Steven was Midgard’s greatest hero  _and_ its kindest soul. It was galling that Barnes knew of his culpability, but perhaps that knowledge would keep him honest.

He heard the soldiers whisper “Baldr” as they rode into Asgard proper and his heart clenched. He struggled to respond to the waving crowds, their cheers at the sight of the Queen and the Prince returning with an air of celebration unseen since before Loki’s imprisonment. Flowers and herbs were thrown before the horses’ hooves and heady scents rose from the crush. Pennants snapped in the wind, carrying the colors of Asgard aloft.  

Beloved though he was, Steven was not Baldr come again. Thor had been but a boy when Baldr and Hodr died, still playing with tops at Frigga's skirts while Asgard mourned.

Odin’s eldest son would not return until Asgard crumbled; his dark-haired twin would never come again.  

Thor did not like being used, even by his mother. Barnes, crouching sour-faced in his saddle, reflected his dismay as they rode to the palace. Steven appeared to be too distracted by the beauty of Asgard to notice Barnes’ distemper or Thor’s own. When they arrived at the throne room, Steven was gawping. He looked beautiful, virtuous, and ever so young.  

It was almost a relief when Odin noticed the flowers on Steven’s chest. He was in the middle of a ceremonial greeting in the great audience chamber, clearly surprised by the pretty pageantry with which his wife had arrived. And then he looked at Steven, then the dark-haired shadow at his back.  His eye narrowed sharply.  

“What mummery is this?” he demanded.  The shout echoed in the hall and the court descended into whispers. 

“I do not understand, my lord-husband,” she responded demurely.   

“This,” Odin roared, pointing at Steven. “Has your grief driven you mad, woman? This Midgardian wears the sign of our  _son_.”  

Steven looked confused, though he quickly schooled his expression into neutrality: a soldier under the eye of an angry commander. Barnes tensed. Even missing an arm, Barnes’ next impulse was obvious. Thor edged towards Steven, only to find his mother cutting off his path.  

“He does so by my blessing,” she said, resting a hand lightly on Steven’s shoulder. She spoke with a völva’s certainty, gifted by sight beyond time. “He is worthy.”  

Her words wended their way through the crowd, dividing into fractal whispers. 

Odin was silent on the great dais, his face nearly purple with rage. There was a moment when Thor knew his own thoughts matched that of the assassin—how best to extricate Steven from the chamber and get out of the city. His hand strayed to Mjölnir: it would not be the first time they had taken Steven over a shoulder to haul him out of danger. The trouble would be keeping Barnes from killing anyone. Perhaps he should be incapacitated first. 

“That remains to be seen,” the Allfather said, sharply reining in his anger, and continued with the ceremony. Thor’s hand remained near the weapon’s handle, his attention divided between the Allfather and the assassin. 

There would be a feast to celebrate their arrival: combining the Queen’s return to Odin’s palace, along with Thor’s own return from Midgard. And the unexpected event of Steven’s presence caused ripples of gossip throughout the court. No doubt some thought their prince had brought Steven to court to stay and believed Barnes was some kind of manservant. The idea should have been amusing, but he saw danger in every shadow. 

His mother insisted that Steven dress for dinner: Asgard’s grand formality had little in common with the cozy halls of Fensalir and the suites in which they would stay had servants enough to attend to such things. Barnes followed, of course, and the three of them were attended by servants sent by the Queen’s order.  

Used to such attentions, Thor was able to observe the others as he was made presentable. Barnes allowed the servants to wash and dress him. His face was blank as they stripped off clothes dusty from the road, acting as though the servants around him were invisible. In contrast, Steven begged off the attentions, blushing.

Politeness finally dissolved as he grabbed the clothes, a razor, and a wash basin out of several pairs of hands, apologized profusely, and ducked behind a screen. He emerged later, pulling at his clothes, face pink.  

Barnes stared ahead without acknowledging the sight. Thor grinned as a servant—one of old Elof’s grandsons?—braided his hair. 

The feast was unavoidably impacted by uncertainty loose in the court since the attack on  Heimdall. Thor ate with more duty than enthusiasm. Heimdall remained injured and the attacker had not been caught. His mother’s treatment of Steven only widened the chasm between her and his father; more grief came between them.   

And Barnes sat at Steven’s side, whispering in his ear when Frigga did not have him occupied. Barnes’ hair gleamed in the light of the feast hall, as dark as Steven's was light. The man had paid precious little attention to his grooming in Midgard. Perhaps his uncharacteristic acquiescence to the attendants' work was a continuation of his mission to woo Steven: the strategic application of soap.  

One upside to their continued division into visitors' quarters was that Steven’s bath would be separate from Barnes’ own.  If the man again required help washing, there were brawny servants aplenty who could dunk him with the appropriate amount of care.  

Thor sat at his father’s side carefully keeping his body angled toward his father, but not aimed beyond. Betraying his urge to observe Steven and Barnes would annoy the Allfather, who distrusted anything of Midgard.

Similarly, seeing Frigga dote on Steven would only hone his inclination to see Steven as the representative of all of Midgard’s flaws.  

It was a pity Barnes could not shoulder that burden as well. The thought was an unworthy one but had the ring of truth. Odin thought the Midgardians foolish, arrogant, and, above all, dangerous. Barnes carried these qualities like a cloak.  

He had promised Steven, during their second visit to the infirmary, that he would attempt to make peace with Barnes. Steven had insisted the man was even more unwell than they had realized, that even the worst of his actions so far had been determined by his damage done by his former masters.  

But that did not guarantee that the wretched claims Barnes had made in an attempt to goad him back at the Tower were not true. Thor had no interest in Barnes’ claims of Steven’s promiscuity—he had been beautiful even then and Thor did not begrudge him his past pleasures any more than he was ashamed of his own—but the other claims had seeped into his bones, made them ache.   

He did not believe that Barnes would knowingly harm Steven, not mortally. But it was undeniable that his presence was a greater danger than his skills—such as they were with his arm removed—were a boon.   

Thor looked out at the boisterous court, full seats at tables throughout the hall. Sif and the Warriors Three feasted below, seated on the second-highest dais. He caught Sif’s eye and she nodded. She and their compatriots understood something was afoot and he would speak with them once he was no longer obliged by ceremony to remain at the high table.  

Many times he had imagined bringing Steven to Asgard himself, as his own honored guest. Dressing Steven in the clothes of his people, choosing the raiment himself and making a game of dressing—and undressing—his beloved. Introducing him to Sif and the Warriors Three as fellow soldiers in arms. Betting on the outcome of a wrestling match between Steven and Volstagg; taking his winnings and giving them to Steven, his first earnings of the coin of the realm. A warrior’s welcome and a long life in Asgard sharing arms and devotion: he had described his fancies to his Asgardian companions more than once during his most recent return home.  

His mother had engineered Steven’s arrival to be something else, but why?  

He spoke in his father’s ear, asking for the most recent news of the investigation into the attack. Far better for the Allfather to focus on the problem of enemy infiltration into the court than to brood over Steven, who sat so humbly at the side of the Queen, who smiled at Barnes’ whispers.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content Notes:  
> \- In general, sections written from Bucky's perspective include a lot of foul language and, this time, some ableist language specifically. Bucky is walking Content Note  
> \- Bucky remembers murdering a CEO in the 1990s and has opinions on cosplay  
> \- Bucky thinks about his continued confusion about what he's supposed to do with Steve  
> \- Bucky thinks about the prospect of being healed by Frigga: he considers it tantamount to being wiped in the chair  
> \- Bucky remembers his meeting with the artificer the previous day and references the removal of what remained of his upper-arm; it's suggested that he may have dissociated during the meeting  
> \- Bucky chews bread kind of obnoxiously and there's some description of how the food feels in his mouth; he talks around it at one point  
> \- There are multiple references to the deaths of Baldr and Hodr, including Odin's anger at Steve wearing the flower associated with Baldr  
> \- Bucky dissociates while being attended to by palace servants; Steve is upset and embarrassed, though not as a result of Bucky  
> \- Thor judges Bucky's poor grooming so far; given his disinterest in seeing Bucky's trauma as a legitimate reason for his behavior, the thoughts are rather ableist


	13. Dead Boy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve and Bucky make it through dinner and get properly introduced to Thor's closest friends.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a long one! Dinners go on for a while in Asgard. This one has some unpleasant moments for Steve, so 'ware the Content Notes at the end!

Steve couldn’t understand why a flower was causing so much trouble. Frigga had told him to wear it. She was Thor’s mother: if he couldn’t trust her, how could he trust anyone here?   

Steve understood symbols: he’d been one during the war, had another strapped to his back. He’d been a stupid one at first—though he was grateful for the people who had bought war bonds: they were trying to help—and then a slightly better one, actually serving in the field and posing for the occasional film reel. For most of his subsequent career, he’d been frozen, but the symbol of Captain America had been hard at work for decades. When he woke up, it was back to the job. Wear the suit, smile the smile, keep his elocution sharp. Occasionally get hit in the head and shot at.   

He knew symbols were important. He just couldn’t understand what he was supposed to mean here and why.  

It was easier to ignore the eyes in the hall, and bow his head and listen to the Queen as he ate instead. There was so much food: richly scented roasts and stews. Not everything he ate was fully recognizable, but it was pretty tasty. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been uncomfortably full, but he was near enough now. 

Thor had disappeared halfway through dinner. Steve had seen the four warriors who had been pointed out to him as Thor’s friends follow, loping casually through the massive hall. None of them had come back.   

Now, dinner seemed to be over, except for a small army delivering dessert trays and more drinks. There were still folks reciting poetry or singing songs, and genial fights breaking out in the lower sections of the hall. Scuffles brought out cheers, and they usually ended with those involved pounding each other on the back and gesturing for the servants to bring more mead. 

Steve had drunk as little as seemed polite—there’d been so many toasts—and he was vaguely aware of a weight to his limbs that might mean he was a little  intoxicated.  Muscles heavy like honey on his tongue.  

Thor had brought Asgardian mead to the Tower after he returned from bringing Loki to justice and it was the first time Steve had been properly soused since the serum. He remembered being carried to his room, tucked against a broad chest. He’d been so drunk he’d been full of sleepy, confused indignation: he had twisted like an angry cat, had told “Bucky” to put him down, unless he was planning on treating him like a dame in bed, too. The laugh in response had rumbled through his bones and he’d been gently tucked under the covers before he realized it wasn’t 1937. The next morning, he went to apologize to Thor and explained who Bucky was. 

It was the first time  Steve  had  told  _anyone_ about Bucky since he woke up and he had ended up telling stories until he cried and Thor cried too, because he was _like that_. He’d been so sure that they would have gotten along: two, big, social men who took up extra space in the world.  

Bucky took up simultaneously more and less space now: he was more densely muscular but he withdrew into the background when he didn’t want attention. He had drunk even less than Steve during dinner. He’d been tense since they left Thor’s mother’s palace, but it only got worse when Odin had pointed at Steve and bellowed. Bucky’s shoulders had gone up and stayed there. Whenever Steve turned to look at Bucky, his posture was tight with unease. 

It was almost worse that Frigga was working so hard to be friendly on Steve’s other side. More than friendly, even—she had kept up a running explanation of what was going on during dinner, who was speaking and why, which times to use the cutlery at the table and which times to use the belt-knife she had given him. She explained key figures of the court and their political affiliations, and their opinion of Midgardians. He filed it all away and knew he had the faces of all the key players she’d pointed out.  

She was treating him like he belonged here. Like he would stay. 

Whenever she took a break to eat or sip her mead or turn to her husband, Bucky leaned over to point out the strangeness of it all. Most of what he said was crude, unkind, or both, but Bucky’s voice in his ear was grounding, was real. The way he sat put the lie to the easy tone of his voice, though.   

When Thor had left, Bucky hadn’t commented on it. He had just cleared his throat to draw Steve’s attention.  

“Thank Christ, they don’t give a shit about making a mess at the table,” he’d said smoothly. “If we were standing on ceremony, Steve, you’d have to cut my meat for me.” He’d winked and had a sip of mead, but Steve suspected he hadn’t actually swallowed anything. Mead on his lips but not on his tongue. “Think I should challenge Thor’s pa to an arm-wrestling match? I bet I could take him. Don’t laugh, Steve, you’ll hurt my feelings.”   

Eventually, Steve’s head had started to feel heavy, concussed by the endless courses of food. Frigga had instructed servants to show them to a guest wing. Where Thor’s mother’s hall had been all warm stone, Asgard was a bronze palace, cut to giant measures. It was easy to imagine a chill as they were led away.  

Walking through the massive halls, Steve hoped he could still sleep alone. The prospect of choosing whether to stay with Bucky or Thor the night before had made him feel like the protagonist of one of Clint’s movies. The female lead always had two guys after her, but it was always obvious from the start which one she really went for.  

Except it wasn’t obvious, and he wouldn’t choose either of them, couldn’t even entertain the idea of not needing to choose. It couldn’t be like it had been with Bucky and Peggy, all three of them rubbing along somehow: that might not have even survived the war, if things had gone differently.   Peggy had settled down with a husband. She’d had a normal family once Bucky and Steve were gone; what if that had been what she really wanted from the start? 

Bucky might have been willing to share because war was godawful boredom punctuated by terror and you stole what sweetness you could, but he’d  _liked_ Peggy. And now he was confused, for God’s sake, hurting from decades of torture. And even if he wasn’t, even if he and Thor got on, Thor wasn’t  _like_ that: he had only ever talked about cheerful, casual affairs with friends or the rare devoted romance like Jane. 

It wasn’t going to work like that: there were no excuses this time for Steve to be so goddamn greedy.  

Opting out was the only ethical choice here, even if it was unkind and he’d already taken advantage of Thor once, had already waited too long to push Bucky away the night he’d climbed into Steve’s bed. He had to do better from now on, had to explain himself clearly, and stick to his decision.  

 _Stop being such a sad_ _-_ _sack_ _, Rogers_ , he thought, grimacing as they turned another corner. 

More of the movies should have ended like that, with the heroine deciding she needed to figure her own issues out and going off to learn how to sculpt, or something.   

Clint had argued at length why several of the films should have ended with the love interests getting together. Tony had gleefully produced blue movies where that happened, among a lot of other things, very little of which seemed faithful to the spirit of the original work. Steve was suddenly, uncomfortably reminded of a recurring dream he’d had since returning to the Tower.  Thor’s thick fingers mussing Bucky’s regulation cut.  

The hallway didn’t feel quite as chilled when the back of his neck burned. 

He and Bucky loitered in the main chamber of the apartment after the servants left: at a guess, Steve thought it was for entertaining the guests of guests—what a notion. There was a giant fireplace, faced by plush seating, and food everywhere.  

Holy mother of God, it was wasteful.  

“So, we know they love poetry and they don’t use napkins,” Bucky said, scratching what was now more beard than scruff. Would he want help shaving?  “And they definitely don’t ration.”  

“What the hell are we doing here?” Steve asked, not in the mood for any more false cheer today. “You wanted to come here, Buck. Why?”  

Bucky sighed. He looked handsome in the strange clothes; he always looked good, even in a borrowed suit. Even on an alien world. “I’m not—” He sighed again, deeper. “At the time, I wanted to get you away from his mother. Risk to the mission. I  _know_ ,” he said, holding his hand up at Steve. “I know there’s no mission. But they just…they just seem to  _want_   you, Steve.”  

He nodded. It was like the USO, except all the soldiers smiled at him instead of throwing kitchen scraps at his head. “They sure have been…friendly.”  

Bucky took his hand, squeezing it. His tone was sharp, grey eyes narrowed. At least he looked like he meant what he said, now. “Friendly, nothing. She’s got you kitted out as her dead boy, Steve.”  

“It’s not that,” he protested. “She knows who I am.”  

“She’s not acting like it.” Bucky leaned closer, his voice going quiet. His fingers ground the bones in Steve’s wrist. “Steve, I don’t—”  

“Steven! ...Barnes.” Thor had arrived, but he wasn’t alone. Four soldiers followed after. Volstagg with the enormous beard;  Hogun  with the curious stillness. Bucky abruptly dropped his hand and stalked over to the far side of the seating area.  

“So this is he? Jane was prettier,” Sif observed with a grin, slapping Steve on the arm. The hit stung for a sharp moment, even through two layers of fabric; had she pulled the blow or not? What a thought. She was so  _tall_.   

“I won’t argue with that, ma’am.” He wouldn’t. Jane was beautiful and a genius, to boot.  

“Oh, he’s pretty enough,” Fandral—of course it was Fandral with the goatee—said and winked at Steve. His tone was suggestive, but Steve had been told to expect that. He leaned against the wall, eyeing Steve theatrically. “ _Very_ pretty, actually, I—”  

“That’s enough,” Thor said with wry affection. “Steven...Sergeant Barnes, I present to you Lady  Sif and the Warriors Three: Volstagg the Valiant, Fandral the Dashing, and Hogun the Grim.” The four of them each acknowledged the introduction differently: Sif smiled and  Hogun shrugged, while Fandral bowed and winked again. Volstagg slapped Steve’s other arm.  

More thud than sting: it was like being hit with a friendly sack of cement.  

“So, this is Thor’s Captain,” Volstagg boomed, sitting on a couch: he was so broad he took up all of it, on top of being nearly Thor’s height. “We have heard many tales of your prowess in battle.”  

“And elsewhere,” Fandral added.   

He could feel the blush creeping up, starting from his chest.  

Sif arched a brow, watching him. Somehow the way she just waited for him to say something was so much worse than Fandral’s flirting. It was like seeing Peggy in armor—how she’d been, rather than how she’d looked, Peggy if she’d taken the serum.  

He should say something. Goddammit, he’d been so good at this during the war: he’d lost the knack, serving with STRIKE. He had the social skills of a grumpy HYDRA foot-soldier.  

“Why don’t you get a title?” Bucky asked Sif. For Bucky—especially  _this_ Bucky—his tone was very nearly polite. By any other standard, he sounded like an ass. Even if he was trying to give Steve a break from the boisterous attention.  

“Lady  _is_ a title,” she said, looking at Bucky with interest as she settled on a couch. She poured herself a drink from a jug of wine. “Are you Midgardians unfamiliar with the concept of nobility?”  

Thor watched the exchange, eyes narrowing, but not commenting.  

“Proud men of the republic, us two,” Bucky answered, then shrugged. “Well. Maybe not the same republic. Anyway, their titles say something about who they are. Yours says who gave birth to you. Or married you.” He smiled, and it would have been charming if he wasn’t being incredibly rude and frankly a little sexist. 

“Bucky—” Steve began.  

“He is technically correct,” she said, clearly not taken in by the smile. But perhaps willing to entertain the possibility. Steve knew from Thor’s stories that Sif enjoyed being diverted as much as the next Asgardian warrior—particularly if that warrior was Fandral. Bucky could certainly be diverting when he wanted.  

He supposed it was good to see Bucky enjoying himself. He’d always loved to flirt, loved to feel appreciated. And Sif’s expression was certainly interested as she continued: “I am also known as Sif the Perilous and Sif the Stalwart. And I have not yet met a man fit to be my consort.”  

“Bucky Barnes,” he said, walking over to her couch and holding out his hand.  

“No titles?” She took it, squeezing with both hands. Steve wondered how the calluses on Bucky’s hand felt in hers. They’d been hard around his wrist as Bucky squeezed. How would they fit, palm to palm? 

“No titles worth mentioning,” Bucky answered, grinning.  

There was a moment before they let go. Hogun settled on the couch beside Sif, while Bucky joined Fandral. It was like watching hawks circle in the sky. Only Thor and Steve were left standing.   

“Barnes is also known as the Soldier of Winter,” Thor supplied, looking from Bucky to Sif with a combination of annoyance and interest.  

“Ah, winter. Wretched season,” Fandral said, patting Bucky on the knee. Steve realized in a quiet way that Bucky was going to flirt with every single one of them while he stood there and watched. “Best left to the Jotuns. Tell us, what other appellations does our prince’s Captain possess?”  

“There’s a song—hey, Steve, I remember there’s a song!” Bucky said cheerfully, accepting a goblet of mead from Hogun. “The Star-Spangled Man with a Plan.” He winked at Fandral. “It makes more sense if he’s wearing his uniform.”  

“You’ll have to teach it to the bards,”  Fandral responded lightly.  

“Thor already attempted to teach  Fandral,” Hogun said in his hoarse voice. “He insisted the song was unlistenable.” 

“Thank-you, Hogun.” Fandral’s smile stiffened and he took a long swallow of mead.  

“Enough pleasantries,”  Volstagg  said,  passing Hogun a bowl of fruit before turning to regard Thor. “Why are you sleeping in a guest wing?”  

“Your own chambers are  _much_  more pleasant.”  

Thor shrugged. “I thought Steven and  Sergeant Barnes would prefer some distance from the center of the palace. Our crossing  was bracing and both required healing.”  

Hogun bit into an apple—at least it looked like an apple—and the crunch of the flesh heralded a flurry of responses to Thor. 

“They look hale enough at the moment.”  

“Where are the servants? This place is deserted.”  

“You’re sleeping  _here_? Truly?” Sif asked. She made it sound like Thor was planning on spending the night in a leaky shed.  

“Yes,” Thor said, a little testily. “And I will call the servants.” He touched a glimmering panel on the wall.  

Steve hung back, feeling awkward as the company turned to him. “I, uh, might get some rest,” he said. He saw Bucky lean back, displaying himself on the couch. He was all long lines and a wolf grin. Bucky put down the mead and popped a grape into his mouth. He’d never minded things being swank.  

“Nonsense,” Volstagg cried. “You must tell us tales of your deeds in Midgard.”  

“It will prove interesting to see whether Thor has exaggerated some of the feats of your Avengers,” Sif said, smiling at him.  

Hogun cocked his head, looking at Steve as he continued to bite flesh from the apple.  

“Undoubtedly he has. Honor demands the Captain correct our prince’s confabulations.”  

Steve hesitated, seeing the doubtful expressions. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I really should go.” It occurred to him he had no idea which room was his. Did it matter?  

“I will show you,” Thor said over the protests of the room.   

Bucky looked as if he might respond, but he whispered something to Fandral instead; the man laughed and patted his knee again.  Steve tried not to wince. He’d spent years watching Bucky flirt: this was a  _good_   sign.  His shoulders were finally down from his ears. 

“I can tell you stories about Steve,” Bucky announced. “Ones even his nibs  hasn’t  heard.”  

“Delightful,” Fandral said without much enthusiasm. “But it’ll be ever so much more amusing if you tell them when Thor isn’t running off after him and abandoning his duties as host.”  

Ignoring this and other commentary, Thor gestured for Steve to follow him. Servants entered the room with even more food, more drinks.  

Steve sighed as he joined Thor in the interior hall. “I’m sorry, I’m just—”   

“You are only recently healed,” Thor supplied easily. “And you spent the dinner being tutored by my mother in the subject of court etiquette and gossip. Both demand much energy.” He took Steve’s arm, folding it warmly under his own. He had an even bigger bounce in his step than usual as they walked down a hallway. Steve had never seen him with his closest friends before: they teased and adored him.   

Walking into the bedroom, Steve remembered what that was like. Thor’s friends were a bit like Falsworth or Tony: used to things being fancy, but as ready to get down in the muck as anyone when necessary. He’d bet they complained about it, though, used to sleeping in big soft beds like the monster that should have dominated the room, except the room itself was comically over-sized. There were other doors, probably leading to the private bathroom, and the study, and the shooting range. Tony would have found this excessive.  _Tony_. 

Steve drew his hand across the intricately carved surface of an armoire. Every piece of clothing he owned could have fit in it: he bet the clothes Frigga had let him borrow were already inside, arranged by some underpaid servant who was supposed to be invisible.  There were tapestries on the other walls: one depicted Thor wielding Mjölnir, flying through the head of some giant monster. The gore—flying in the air, dripping from his hands—was woven with a metallic navy thread. He was surprised by how much art was in the Palace: Thor had never mentioned it. 

“May we speak?” Thor asked. He was looking at the tapestry, frowning. 

“Of course,” Steve replied, realizing as he said it that he shouldn’t, that they should talk in the hall. He should have explained  this  already.  

Thor sat heavily on the bed. He did look handsome: all done up for court, with more braids in his hair than usual. Steve hadn’t seen the servants put them in because he’d been busy trying to dress himself. He’d done his own make-up in the USO and he could certainly put on a pair of pants without help. But the braids in Thor’s hair _were_ interesting: fancier than he’d ever seen him wear before. Thor had taught Steve how to do some basic braids, teasing that it was another form of art suited to clever fingers. These had more strands, were woven through with leather thongs: trying to imagine their construction made his fingers itch. Steve wondered if they’d offered Bucky the braids as well: his hair had been left loose to fall down his neck, shadow his face. 

“I am concerned that you have been embroiled in something beyond your understanding.”  

“Have been since 1941,” he agreed quietly, standing awkwardly in the big room.  

“Forgive me, I misspoke.” Thor cleared his throat; apparently unaware he was picking at the embroidered bedspread. “My mother has chosen to present you in a particular way. I do not know why. I must remain here, but Sif and the others could escort you back to Fensalir, or journey to another property.”  

Steve shook his head. He wasn’t here on tour. “I’m fine, I just…I just don’t get what’s going on here. It’s the flower, right?” He looked down at the pretty little blossom pinned to his tunic. It looked so innocuous. 

“It is more than that. Your reputation precedes you and my mother has chosen to highlight the characteristics you share with one of my brothers.” 

“Baldr,” Steve said. He had excellent hearing and Thor had made the comparison himself, once.  It wasn’t any less weird to hear other people say it. "But why?" 

“She would not explain,” Thor said, still plucking at the embroidery. Metallic thread came away in his fingers. He stared down at his hand. 

“Thor,” a voice boomed from the audience chamber. Volstagg, he thought. “You can  bed your man after you’ve settled this bet!”  

“Aw, let him finish. Shouldn’t take  long.”  Jesus, was that  _Bucky_?  

A chorus of rowdy laughter.  

“At least he’s making friends,” Steve said, feeling stupid.  

“I cannot imagine why. They are aware of his nature,” Thor said, face darkening at Steve’s expression.  

“Thor, I thought you were going to—” He stiffened, hearing a murmur, then another round of ribald laughter. It shouldn’t bother him—making dirty jokes was what soldiers _did_. But for a moment, he  was  tempted to make the stupid joke true.   

The thought was painful in its  sudden  detail. He could push Thor down on the bed. Wrench enough clothing aside to get Thor’s cock out. Tease it with the inattention of his hand as he fingered  himself open with only his own spit to ease the way. Press both hands over Thor’s mouth and slide down onto him.  Jerk  up Thor’s shirt and bring himself off on his chest. Kick him out without letting him  finish.   

He could push him out the door with  Steve’s  come dripping under his mussed clothing, drying tacky on Thor’s stomach as he struggled to rejoin the conversation.   

See how Bucky liked  _that_.  

“Oh Jesus,” Steve said. “You need to go.”  

“Steven, I—”  

“You should go see your friends. Before Bucky seduces them. And you get left out,” Steve heard himself saying haltingly, hurrying over to a couch to put down his shield, strip off the harness and begin undressing. “ _Goodnight_ ,” he said, pulling at the overtunic  with its decorated collar, its  goddamn  flowers. The undertunic came with it and something ripped in the shoulder as he stripped, leaving the stiff fabric on the floor. 

He heard Thor leave, and then another burst of laughter. This time, he could definitely hear Bucky. Steve remembered that laugh; it said that Bucky was feeling admired and amused. Once he stripped down to the long shorts that he was pretty sure were underwear, he slipped into the bed. He curled up and put his hands over his ears, feeling like a child.  

The laughter bled into his dreams.  

* * *

“Thor tells us he is the cause of your injury,” the dandyish one—Fandral—said. He nodded at Bucky’s pinned sleeve as Sif, Volstagg, and Hogun argued whether Thor would return, and in what condition. Technically they were  _all_ aliens, but these ones seemed fun, and most importantly, none of them seemed especially interested in Steve. Steve was a means for teasing Thor. That was useful to know: it told him how the Alien had been talking up Steve in private, when he wasn't telling anyone who’d listen that Steve was their equivalent of the second coming.  

“That seems rather severe of him,”  Fandral  added. 

“He was late to that party,” Bucky said to the fop. “I lost most of it in a fall, Nazis cut off the rest.” Fandral blinked, listening without  understanding.  

“Assholes,” Bucky said. “Assholes cut off my arm. Thor ripped off a replacement, made by slightly different assholes.”  

Fandral raised an eyebrow. “Perhaps he will find you another. It would only be polite.”  

“Where’d he get the hammer? I bet whoever made that makes great arms.”  

“I imagine they do indeed,”  Fandral  said.  Bucky appreciated the false primness; it would be good to practice the Bucky voice and the flirting. Steve would be ready for that now that they’d shared, now that he was getting used to having Bucky at his shoulder in public again. Mission objectives again. Goddammit.  

Flirting with Steve didn't have to be    _for_ anything. He could just do it, if he wanted. If Steve let him. 

Funny how stiff Steve was with the Alien’s cronies, though; it was like seeing him skinny again, shy as a novice on her first day out of the convent unless he was challenging someone to a fistfight because they’d littered, or whistled on a Sunday, or some other insane, stiff-necked bullshit. 

“More?” An amused smile as the fop held up more booze.  

He held out his glass to be refilled; maybe it would shut the mission up. The others responded with good-natured jeering as the Alien returned. He looked preoccupied but otherwise unchanged: apparently visiting privileges with Steve did not include a quick fuck. Not yet at least.  

The Alien had gold thread in between his thumb and forefinger; he rolled it idly, letting it catch the light as he slumped into a chair.  

“So little time? A job left half-done,” the big one said.  

“A man left half-tumbled.” Sif eyed the Alien. “Do you plan on returning to finish?”  

Laughter. They were watching to see how he would react to the joke. They might be loud, but none of them were stupid and the Alien had probably briefed them about his interest in Steve. As if he—the other Bucky,  _someone_ —hadn’t laid claim to Steve Rogers when this asshole was still busy playing grab-ass with his sidekicks. 

Right, he needed to respond to the shit-talking.  Funny how the Alien wasn't stopping it: Steve had to know what the laughter was about and he would just _hate_ it.

“Careful,” he said to the Alien. “This one might go and finish the job for you.” He nudged Fandral, not hard enough to jostle him and spill wine on the fancy jacket, but only just. These people didn’t flirt subtly.  

“Dear me, is that an option?”  

“Sif’ll want a turn.”  

“I might indeed. I’ve not had a decent bed-partner in ages, spending all my time with you three. Thor’s pretty Midgardian might suffice. Again.”  

The prince sat and drank deeply from a flagon passed by Volstagg. He did not respond to the jeering, except to color slightly and roll his eyes.  

He certainly didn’t mind when  _they_ sized up Steve, which suggested none of them meant it. Or he was planning on sharing. And what exactly did she mean by _again_? 

“You had a bet that needed settling?” the Alien asked the big one. 

“He already lost,” the woman said, laughing.  

“Fandral told Barnes that you owe him an arm,” the quiet one interjected. Of course, he’d been listening. “Perhaps from the smiths of Nidavellir.” Where the funny little tech had been from. 

The Alien actually laughed into his beer. He drank deeply and wiped his mouth. “Perhaps,” he said. “Can you be trusted with such a gift, Barnes?”  

“Of course,” he said. “You trust me with Steve, don’t you?”  

Again, laughter muffled by drink, maybe a tone lower. He certainly wasn’t pacing himself: none of them were, except maybe the quiet one.  

Maybe the Alien would actually relax now that Steve was secured away like good china. Bucky would check on that himself, once the rest were in bed. Whatever the Mission was or wasn’t, seeing Steve sleep helped: it calmed something in his head. Steve’s big, stupid, beautiful mouth soft with sleep, his breath slow and full in his chest. Snoring like a jackass. Steve. 

Movement caught his eye. The Alien shoved Volstagg, nearly toppling the couch over—Christ these people played rough—and took up a variation on an argument that had probably lasted them years. Centuries? The quiet one whispered to Sif, then went to stoke the fire. She watched him go, smiling. She’d bear watching: Steve was a sucker for a gutsy woman. 

“Thor says he struck you during your battle,” Fandral said. He said it as if pointing out that he’d pinned him while wrestling. “I’ve never actually taken a blow from mighty  Mjölnir. Tell me, what was it like?”  

 _Like decades of torture_   _all at once_   probably wasn’t what he wanted to hear 

These people loved stories. Luckily, the old Bucky knew how to spin them. It was a skill, somewhere far beneath the rest of it. The easy stuff. He tipped the glass to his lips, and prepared to deliver some  charming  bullshit. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content Notes:  
> \- In general, there's a fair amount of swearing and and not all of it comes from Bucky  
> \- Steve refers to the large amounts of food being consumed  
> \- Steve watches some casual fights break out as dinner turns into dessert: he correctly understands that no real injury is intended and this is pretty much a typical after-dinner activity in Asgard.  
> \- Steve remembers drinking too much Asgardian alcohol back at the Tower once and being so intoxicated he misunderstood what year it was, mistook Thor (who was carrying him to bed) for Bucky, and made a slightly crude sexual remark. No sexual contact whatsoever took place (Steve knows this, but he remains embarrassed by the incident).  
> \- Steve privately shames himself for having been in a polyamorous triad with Bucky and Peggy during the war; he discounts their consent at the time as a product of the war and censures himself for loving Bucky and Thor simultaneously now. It's a low moment and his self-shaming is based on the stereotypes that polyamorous people are greedy and/or selfish.  
> \- There is a non-explicit reference to pornography.  
> \- Steve makes a passing reference to a recurring dream he's been having about Thor and Bucky having sex.  
> \- Steve is upset by the luxury around him; Bucky later references rationing  
> \- Bucky refers to his brainwashing and trauma several times, typically very casually  
> \- Steve struggles with jealousy when Bucky is flirtatious with Sif and Fandral; he is distinctly uncomfortable with being attracted to Sif himself  
> \- Steve looks at the tapestry that shows the moment of Thor messily killing a Frost Giant in the Thor movie; there is some reference to the gore being represented artistically  
> \- Volstagg, Sif, Fandral, Hogun and Bucky make several crude sexual jokes about Thor and Steve in the latter parts of the chapter; Thor is unbothered but Steve is upset (and upset with himself for being upset). It's worth noting that Thor is consistently characterized as an active participant exercising sexual agency, while Steve is assumed to be a passive, slightly feminized sexual object.  
> \- Steve imagines having a quick and under-negotiated sexual encounter with Thor; he imagines treating Thor in a way that is both intentionally degrading and aimed at hurting Bucky. The encounter does not occur.  
> \- Bucky refers to his amputation, his fight with Thor, and the resulting loss of the replacement arm; privately, he compares being hit with Mjölnir with his experiences of torture


	14. Core

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Asgardian fruit gets discussed and Loki appears.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This week's update sees Steve trying to shape up and Loki making fun of Thor (and everyone). 
> 
> Updates are going to switch to Thursdays starting next week. Thanks for reading! I'd love to know your thoughts on the story so far. I still have several chapters already prepared, but honestly I'm struggling a bit getting later chapters to work. Any advice is deeply appreciated.
> 
> Content Notes at the End!

When Steve woke up, it was still dark. He’d slept unpleasantly, but for a few straight hours. The dreams had been embarrassingly petty; instead of dreaming about the train or the Valkyrie, instead of Aliens in New York or the falling helicarriers, he’d dreamt about being in a bar during the war, watching Bucky flirt with all of Thor’s friends. Thor had looked on, amused, then gone back to chatting with Peggy and no-one had noticed Steve. 

It was stupid. All anyone  _did_ since the serum was look at him: he should have gotten his fill of it by now.

He wasn't made to be looked at, whatever the USO thought. He'd dithered enough since they'd arrived and he was going to find a way to be of some goddamn use from now on.  He would find out if the team was okay back home and get Bucky some help. If he'd take it.

Steve dressed in enough clothing to be decent and walked out to the chamber with the fireplace. He half-expected to see all of them sprawled out on the couches and chairs, sleeping off the night before, surrounded by goblets and tankards. 

But it was only Bucky, sitting on a chair, staring at the fire. He was alone in a perfectly clean space. Someone must have come during the night to tidy, maybe gently pushing the warriors to bed so there’d be room to sweep. 

“Planning on wearing that to breakfast?” Bucky asked. He nodded at Steve’s approximation of last night’s outfit: just the pants and undertunic, with a shoulder seam ripped half-open.

There were the usual dark circles under Bucky’s eyes, more heavily pressed into the skin by the light of the fire than usual: it must have been a late night entertaining Sif and the Warriors Three. 

Had he slept out here? 

“You’ll mess up that nice shirt, Steve, the way you eat,” Bucky added. 

“Not planning on heading out,” Steve said. “Just couldn’t stay in bed any longer.” He sat on the opposite couch. “How’d you sleep?” 

Bucky shrugged. “Not so bad once the party calmed down. You?” he asked, as if conversing with the fruit bowl. 

“Not great,” Steve replied. They sat in silence. It was the first time they’d been alone—really alone—since Bucky had admitted he’d been pretending. Everything since had been a whirlwind of travel, court functions, and constantly feeling somehow simultaneously both over- and under-dressed. 

The corner of Bucky’s mouth twitched, like he’d tried to smile and forgotten how halfway through.  

Steve cleared his throat. “Hey, Buck. Can I ask you something?” 

“What? Yeah.” Bucky frowned, taking a piece of fruit from the bowl. Was it a peach? It looked sort of like a peach, like it would bruise under his fingers, drip juice down his chin.  

Bucky looked at Steve. “Christ, you look serious. Your guy lose another security guard?”  

"No, no." Steve tried to line up words in his head. “I, uh. All that time in the Tower, I thought I was helping and I wasn’t.” He found himself looking at his hands, wishing he had a piece of fruit to busy himself with, suspecting that if he did, it would end up juiced. The first few weeks after the Serum all over again, feeling like he couldn't touch anything without breaking it. “Can I do anything—to help?” He looked up, wondering if this was all going wrong. 

“Help how?” Bucky asked. His head was cocked to the side, like his was listening to a far-off sound. 

It was Steve’s turn to look confused. “Um. Anyway you like. I know you went through—”  _Unimaginable horrors?_ His brain supplied. He took a deep breath. “You spent decades as a POW, Buck. And I know you’re not okay. You’ve seemed...happier since we got here, though.”  _Not that I can fucking tell, apparently._   “Is being here helping?’” 

Bucky shrugged. “Your guy’s crew isn’t so bad. It’s more social than the high-rise, that’s for sure.” 

“Yeah,” Steve said. “It is.” He blushed: he’d been keeping Bucky like a prisoner, like a pet. Too freaked out by the fact of his existence to let him try to be a person in his own right. “I shouldn’t have kept you isolated like that, Buck. I’m sorry.” 

Bucky snorted and tossed the maybe-a-peach into Steve’s cupped hands. “Steve. I’m a killing machine you let live in your spare room. You were a fucking kindergarten teacher compared to HYDRA.” His eyes softened, a little. “I wasn’t really letting you help, before. I was mostly messing with you, trying to get you ready to leave. Mission objectives.” He shrugged, taking another piece of fruit from the bowl: this one looked like an apple, like it would crunch between his teeth. “It wasn’t only that, though. You really did help. You got me on solid foods, Steve. You treated me like him.” 

“I shouldn’t have tried to make you—”  

“You didn’t,” he said firmly. “I did. I was trying to be him, Steve. All you did was miss your friend.” He buffed the apple on his shirt and bit into it. Steve wondered what they’d done to Bucky’s fillings. The Red Room and HYDRA had him for so long: had they taken care of his teeth? The medical team must have checked.  What a thought to get stuck on.

“What can I do now?” Steve asked.  

“Handjobs out of the question?” 

A hysterical giggle rose out of Steve’s throat and he covered his mouth.  

“Okay, just confirming that,” Bucky said, taking another bite and chewing thoughtfully. He swallowed. “You really wanna help, Steve?” 

Steve nodded, his face hot. 

“Just, uh, be around?” Bucky coughed, looking away. “Let me tag along during whatever the hell kinda vacation this is? And after, maybe. When we go back.” 

“That’s all?” 

Bucky looked at him, expression skeptical.  _This fucking guy_ , his eyes said. Pretty close to how they’d said it seventy years back, truth told. Not the same, but it didn’t have to be. 

“That’s plenty, Steve,” he said quietly and his mouth twitched. The noise from his mouth sounded like a cough at first, then it tripped into a laugh. “Christ,” Bucky said, rubbing his face. “Fucking Christ, Rogers. When did you get so serious?” 

Steve blinked at Bucky’s tittering. “Uh,” he said, “Around when you died, I guess.” 

“Cheer up,” Bucky said, snorting. He took another bite of the probably-an-apple. “I nearly survived.” 

They stared at each other for a moment, before they both started sniggering. The kind of laughter that came in bunches, spooling up again when it seemed to fall away. _Just like Bucky_ , Steve thought, and choked. It wasn’t quite as hysterical as it had been on the infirmary floor—maybe that was progress? 

Bucky snorted. "Well, if we’re being serious—" He dropped off, then frowned. 

“What do you want, Buck?” 

He stared at the core of the fruit in his hand, revealed bite by bite. “Can I touch you? I mean, not for sex, Jesus, I don’t wanna lose the other arm, but, can it be okay if I, I dunno, shake your hand?” Bucky coughed as Steve blinked, feeling drained and dumb. “You tense up when you think I’m gonna touch you, Steve. I get it, if that’s just the way it is. I’m pretty fucking twitchy myself. ” 

“You, uh,” Steve said quietly. “You can touch me, Buck.” 

“Good,” Bucky said, nodding. He kept his hands to himself. “Good. Now go get dressed, Rogers. Wash behind your ears, meet me back here and we’ll see if his nibs is ready for the mess. And eat some fucking fruit in the meantime: you look like you’re going to drop from low blood sugar. If you starve here, you really are the biggest idiot I know." 

Steve ran his thumb over the surface of the peach, still warm from Bucky's hands. "You got it, Buck," he said.  

* * *

 

His brother looked decently well, but that hardly meant anything.  

The might of Asgard could easily keep the body well, but Thor knew Loki had resisted any efforts to heal his mind. It was not the sort of care that can be easily forced. It would be their mother’s first objective, were she to manage to take him to Fensalir. And Loki might allow it, for her sake.  

But for now, he remained in a cell below the palace. Hidden like a dangerous treasure, gleaming where few could see. There were material comforts enough, thanks to their mother’s influence, but his brother’s eyes were restless. The shelves were full of books and a piece of cake was left half-eaten on a writing table.  There was a mass of scattered papers, covered in his brother’s handwriting: strangely shaky, more difficult to decipher than usual. 

“Come to interrogate me on father’s behalf?” Loki asked. His voice was lazy, affected, but his gaze glistened. He shifted books over the pile of papers. 

Odin had not visited him. Their mother came, both in person and by sendings. In this cell, some of Loki’s magic was allowed; to be completely sapped of it would be like blinding him. Thor could feel his brother pressing at his mind. He could have just as easily stayed beyond the confines of the cell, where his brother’s magic could not reach. But Loki could not exert control, just indulge his curiosity. Talking without this invasion simply took too long; he would grow frustrated and refuse to continue conversing.  

Loki’s crimes were many, but to speak with him through the glass was at best, impractical; at worst, cruel. “No,” Thor said, trying not to flinch under Loki’s hasty search through his surface thoughts.   

Unkind though the contact was, Loki needed the company. To the best of Thor’s knowledge, Hogun sometimes visited Loki: of their peers, he had always trusted Loki the least and understood him the best, which had produced a strange companionship between them. But other than he, Thor, and Frigga, Loki had precious few visitors. Odin’s heartbreak and shame cast a wide shadow on the former prince.  

His brother made an expression of disgust at the thought and changed the subject. “You brought the Midgardian Captain, how the court will adore  _that_.” An image of Steven, beautiful in the clothes of the realm, breaking his morning fast. The court watching him with curious eyes, another name on their lips. “Mother must be so pleased to finally have  _two_   of you again.”   

“No-one could replace you in her heart,” he said. It was true: Frigga’s children came before all else. “And you know that bringing Steven was not my choice. Nor the other." 

“Oh, yes,” Loki replied, sounding amused. A sudden image of Barnes in his grey garb, his sly grin. His lips nearly brushing Steven’s ear at the high table. “The lustful, maimed one. How delightfully savage. May I have him, when you are finished with him?”  

“He is not mine to give.” What a combination.  

Memories shuffling like pages. Barnes licking his teeth like a hound. “He will not abandon your Captain, so if you and Mother have your way, he will have to remain here.” He shrugged.  “I cannot fathom why anyone would be obsessed with such a _dull_ creature, but apparently you have that flaw in common.”  

Thor tilted his head, considering. His brother understood behavior in ways he did not; Loki disdained much of what he understood, true, but he had always excelled at  discerning motivations and predicting outcomes.  

“What do you believe he wants from Steven?”  

Loki looked as if he had just received good tidings. “Horrors,” he said, savoring the word like wine.  

What Barnes had done on the riverbank, what he might do here.  It had been foolish to hope for aught else. 

“You think so?”  

Green-eyed disdain. “To truly plumb the negligible depths of the Midgardian’s mind would require his presence here, but he’s simple enough. Even  _you_   see it. I cannot imagine why you thought you needed my attention in the matter. My capabilities are wasted on these mortals you favor.”   

“I did not come only for that,” he insisted. Loki could see his sincerity; why did he pretend otherwise?  

“Peace,” Loki said. “Your earnestness is overpowering. You may tell Father I do not appear to have had a hand in Heimdall’s injury. And tell Mother the cake was lovely and I send my regards.”  

“Can I bring you anything?”  

“What  _could_   you bring? This is the most gilded cage in the Nine Realms.” Loki gestured airily to the full shelves, the fine furniture, the carved wooden screen that hid his bed. The doorway to the garderobe, sufficiently understated.

Thor took in the cell. A pretty, overstuffed exile, beneath the palace that had been their home.  

“I believe Mother plans to petition to remove you to Fensalir,” Thor said. “I will support her.”  

Loki’s serene smile twisted. “My. What changed your opinion?”   

“She says that Asgard does not benefit from you rotting below the palace.”  

“I know  _that_. Why do you suddenly agree?”  

The image of Barnes, lashing out in his supposed confusion. His offer to Steven to see if his mother could help.  

Loki shuddered. “You dare compare me to some crippled mortal? I fear your abandonment of the woman has not benefited you: she was bright, for a Midgardian insect. The Captain’s company has dulled your wits beyond even your native stupidity.”  

“He outmaneuvered you as a tactician, brother.”  

“We were both leading brutes. His brutes were simply bigger.” Loki winced at the memory.  

“That is not how I remember it.” In his mind, he saw the fury of the day: Steven’s leadership, Loki’s injuries.  The broken, heaving sky.

“Fine,” his brother snapped. “Flaunt my failures. If you do not help find Heimdall’s attacker, you will have one of your own.  _Finally_.”  

“Dropping you, failing to see your misery for so long were failures enough for any man,” Thor said.  

“Oh, please. I _let go_.” Loki’s face whitened, and seized the subject of Heimdall. “But what of the faithful sentry? Does Mother remain with him?”  

Frigga had left the evening’s entertainments to attend Heimdall. To the best of his knowledge, she had not yet left, keeping watch over him in the night.  

“I believe so.”  

“A fine opportunity to sabotage his health and finish the assassin’s work.”  

“Surely you jest.”  

“Not at all. Our mother is  _much_  more intelligent than you or Father. In a case with so few leads, she would be my first suspect. Or your silent friend: he’s slightly less stupid than your other companions.”  

“You accuse your only visitors,” Thor said without thinking.  

“Aside from you and you lack the intelligence to plan a murder,” Loki spat, before regaining his composure. “Only given its lack of success, perhaps this _was_ your work. That makes Mother slightly less suspicious, I suppose.” 

Thor reddened at the absurdity. Loki was ridiculing him, saying such things. “She and Heimdall have been friends for eons,” he said, realizing he was playing the fool. Not merely playing, even.  That, at least, was as it had ever been between them.

“Then perhaps it was all a ploy to get you to return from your mortal’s bed,” Loki drawled. The image of Steven on the stair, crying out. “Oh, forgive me. You are not welcome there of late and have been rendering your services wherever he summons you. Surely, she did not need to be so dramatic in order to recall you.” 

Thor bit down his reply: he had thought Barnes a goad, but no-one truly matched his brother. “Brother—” 

Loki raised a dismissive hand. “Perhaps it’s not about you at all, but rather your mortal toy. She does seem to enjoy dressing him up.” The court awash in whispers. “That musn’t please the Allfather.”  

Thor took a deep breath. His brother had never turned his famous flattery on him, preferring to throw him taunts. He wondered what it was like.  

“Delightful, I assure you. My absence is truly a loss to the court,” Loki said flatly.  

“I will pass on your regards to Mother,” he replied evenly. “Anything to Father?”  

“Merely my unconvincing protestations of innocence. Perhaps he should look into lesser threats to the court: I imagine he keeps a list somewhere.”  

“I will return soon,” Thor promised.  

“Please don’t.”  

He left Loki to his half-eaten dainties and his proud isolation. The walk to the palace’s infirmary echoed with Loki’s wild claims. It might well all be lies, down to Barnes’ supposed aims for Steven. However pretty his cell, how many his diversions, his brother’s preferred sport had always been trickery and he could practice it from anywhere. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content Notes:  
> \- Steve makes a passing reference to some of his more traumatic experiences including the crash of the Valkyrie, but he is not re-experiencing that trauma in a significant way; instead, he is grappling primarily with feelings of jealousy and uselessness  
> \- Steve and Bucky discuss Bucky's time in the Tower, including his deception of Steve  
> \- Bucky references his time with HYDRA and refers to himself in a dehumanizing way; it's unclear to what extent this genuine or just a joke  
> \- Bucky makes a joke, asking whether Steve's desire to "help" extends to sexual contact; it doesn't appear to be an attempt to be cruel  
> \- Steve and Bucky engage in some gallows humour on the topic of Bucky's "death"  
> \- Bucky references Steve's apparent discomfort with being touched by him and references the loss of his arm  
> \- Thor visits Loki, who is imprisoned; during the scene, Loki is able to see Thor's surface thoughts and examines them disdainfully  
> \- Loki makes several derogatory comments, including some ableist language regarding Bucky, some more generalized disrespect for Jane, and some sex-negative comments about Thor and Steve; he insults Thor's intelligence several times  
> \- Thor is reminded of Bucky's taunts, including his claim that he sexually assaulted Steve


	15. Manners

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bucky continues to make friends (in his own unique way) and Heimdall wakes up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Our first Thursday (perhaps I should say Thorsday, in honor of Basched's thundershield epic) posting! Thanks very much for your responses to last week's chapter! If you have any more thoughts, please do share them! I really live for comments. Thank-you for reading!
> 
> Content Notes at the end.

The Alien's gang were lounging around, talking shit, but he wasn't paying close attention. Unless one of a few key words came up, the chatter was just background noise. It wasn't good operating procedure, but he was distracted anyway. 

Steve had said he could touch him. It wasn't a fucking invitation, but Steve would let him. Wouldn't freeze, wouldn't flinch away.  

He'd meant it when he said he wouldn't be trying for sex. The Alien was too territorial and Steve was too self-denying to let that happen right now. It would have been strategically beneficial for Steve to cozy up to  _someone_ , though: maybe the woman. The Alien would forgive Steve anything and it might remind him not to let his buddies talk about Steve like some piece of ass. 

For now, it was enough to know that if he reached out, Steve wouldn't freeze. Or at least he’d try not to. The contrast to the old Bucky's freedom—he had been able to touch Steve  _whenever he wanted_ , had been able to cover his whole shoulder in one hand. Had he even understood what that meant?—was made slightly easier by the fact he could still get away with watching Steve sleep.  

Steve had tossed and turned the night before and he had watched, a little drunk on the insane plonk they had here.  

It could have been 1937: the old Bucky coming home toasted from a night out with the guys at work—who Steve never liked, who never liked Steve—watching Steve with hooded eyes before climbing into bed with him. Slinging a lazy arm over Steve's bony little body, clumsily possessive. Except that old Bucky could have had Steve with a gesture, a touch—provided Steve wasn’t in a snit over something and Bucky hadn’t been pushing him away again—and this one only got the first part. The watching. 

The watching wasn’t so bad. Steve gripped the sheets, twisting so the muscles in his back tensed. The Soldier— _Bucky_ , he was the new Bucky now—had excellent night vision, probably better than Steve's and he didn’t need to risk a light to watch an unconscious Steve scowl like sleep itself had offended him. 

He'd considered earlier that morning what it might be like to get into the bed. Obviously, this wasn't how it would go _actually_ , but he'd imagined fucking Steve over the decades when the Soldier was a Soviet robot and Steve was an ice cube. He could damn well do it now, if he wanted. He was free in his own fucking head. 

Mostly, anyway. 

If Steve went along with it, the Soldier could be a needy bastard, like the old Bucky had always been underneath the surface. He could bump up all his hard edges against him, crowd close for attention until Steve pushed him away with mock-annoyance. Okay, maybe real annoyance in the thin, bony—huge, strong?—hands. But Steve would channel his ire into some fitting punishment, smile crookedly, and smother the Soldier's face into the bed.  

After he'd gotten big, Steve had been too afraid of his new strength to really put it to use, kept making Bucky do most of the punishment himself when Steve wasn't getting his new muscles worn at by ragged teeth. Now, though,  _now_ he had to know this Bucky could take it.  

The old Bucky had been afraid after Azzano. Afraid of the burning in his veins, the hollow core hiding inside, the confluence of a sudden desire to never sleep again and the discovery he didn't much need to. He'd been so afraid and he couldn't have imagined what was still coming. Of course, Steve was gentle with him—Peggy too, come to think of it—even  if he hadn't known the exact details that made him so twitchy.  

This Bucky, though, could—would—take anything Steve would give him. If he'd just  _give_ it. 

"Barnes, would you kindly rescue Hogun by taking his place in the ring?"

"Could," he responded noncommittally, looking the speaker over.

Since Steve wasn't likely to hand out spankings any time soon and Peggy's days of playing smiling co-conspirator to whoever was in charge were presumably long over, Bucky was considering fucking the fop. It would certainly spend some of the time he had until Steve came back from playing nurse's aide with the Queen.  

These people were  _extremely_ casual, given the fancy digs they lounged in and the number of courses at dinner: he was almost certain he could have three out of the four with a raised eyebrow and a convenient alcove. Maybe even all four at once. That would certainly kill a few hours. They were feisty.

And Steve would feel so hurt and morally superior once he realized what had happened. He'd managed to keep from fucking the Alien for a whole two, three days now, which practically qualified him for sainthood.  It would probably lead to some kind of breakthrough in their reforming relationship.  

But he'd decided to be careful. It wasn't immediately clear which of the four the Alien had fucked—maybe all of them?—and it was entirely possible he'd respond like a bull elephant seal and try to chase Bucky off his beach.  

They were sparring now: the big one liked to wrestle, while the woman and the fop preferred swords. Sword and shield for her; rapier and sexual tension for him. The quiet one hadn't indicated a preference, though as the fop—Fandral—had said, he was currently being slung around by the bearded giant. 

Fandral had offered to duel one-handed, for fairness' sake. And now he was asking if Bucky would take the quiet one's place in the ring. 

"We could tie Volstagg’s hand behind his back. It would be very amusing."

"There’s still the problem of balance," Bucky said, despite being nearly sure he'd adjusted by now. It wasn't the first time he'd had to work with the arm off.  There was a handler who it had amused to see him beat cocky new Red Room agents one-handed. He suspected he'd broken the redhead’s arm that way, but all of the Widows started to look alike after you'd killed a few of them. They all started to look a little bit like the old Bucky's youngest sister, whose name was a ragged hole in his brain.  

"If your prince gets me an arm, I'll take on all of you at once, as many hands as you like." He winked.   

"What if we tied some weights to you?"

"Fandral, why do you assume everyone shares your strange pleasures?" Sif cocked an eyebrow  

"They do once I’ve shown them how."

Hoarse laughter from the quiet one, pinned under the giant.  

"Ever get shown the ropes yourself?" Bucky asked.  

Puzzlement on the duelist's features.  

"A Midgardian idiom, I think," Volstagg said, pushing himself up from the floor. "I believe it means to introduce one to a new concept."  

"I  _knew_ we should have stayed longer on Midgard."

"We have two natives among us, one right here. Tell us, Winter Warrior, what does the Captain know of ropes?"

"Winter  _Soldier_ , Sif. He was very interested in  _your_ titles," Volstagg admonished as he wiped his sweat with a cloth. He hauled up the quiet one, who didn't seem to have started perspiring. 

Bucky tried to look smug, knowing the answer to the rope question, but something was wrong here. The foursome tussled like brawny children but they spoke like courtiers, passed the conversation around like a shiny bauble. And they had brought up Steve, who they seemed to think of as another pretty toy.  

"Enough of this," Fandral complained. "Surely you can do  _something_ in your condition. Perhaps a hunt. No doubt Thor will have finished his business by the time we've tired ourselves."  

"Horseback or on foot?"  

Another day with a psychosomatic sore ass. Bucky weighed his options. "Could do something else," he said, catching the fop's eye with a dance-hall smile. 

"Ah," the fop said, pleased but uncertain, looking from him to the others. "I must ask: are all Midgardians so liberated these days? We assumed that the Captain's wantonness was a result of his enhancements combined with Thor's characteristic enthusiasm, but perhaps it is simply a....matter of the times?" He looked at Sif, gesturing absentmindedly. "Remind me: was the Lady Jane as single-minded as the Captain? I speak only on the basis of Thor’s reports in both cases, sadly." 

Sif smiled, looking nostalgic. "Enthusiastic and creative, certainly, but not exactly wanton." 

"Wanton," he repeated. The smile was slipping, Fuck. How did he get the smile back? Think of the old Bucky, elbow on the bar. Coiling pretty blonde curls around a finger while the girl blushed. Steve in the corner, watching with big, sad eyes. He felt a muscle behind his eye twitch. 

"Fandral did not have enough time to properly survey the people of Midgard when last we visited as a group," Volstagg announced. "He does so like to know the current attitude towards casual sex wherever we visit."

"Perhaps I should ask the Captain directly." 

"Thor won’t like that," the quiet one said. 

"I said  _ask_." 

Fuck this courtly bullshit; he wasn't interested in social skills. It wasn't what he was  _for_. The old Bucky had needed to be charming because he was weak. Still, the four of them liked regular violence at least as much as they enjoyed conversational feints. And  _that’s_ what he was for, even if he had to feign being inconvenienced by the arm. Finally, something to do that wasn't just watching and waiting. He clapped the fop on the shoulder: there was plenty of shoulder left uncovered but the trick was to squeeze. "Hunting, you said? Let’s go kill something." 

"Good man," Fandral replied, smiling. They knew he'd decided to play along now. "But first, take a grapple with Volstagg. You're positively at an advantage: there's so much less of you to hold onto." 

* * *

Heimdall appeared to only be asleep, which was odd enough in itself. Heimdall  _did not sleep_ : he kept his watch and he welcomed visitors to his eternal post with wry, detached amusement.  

He was smiling in his sleep, as the Allmother held a beautiful hand poised above his head, reading the energies and magics that flowed through his veins. It was a strange thought; even out of his great golden armor, his molten eyes closed in sleep, Heimdall was still a giant of an Asgardian.  

Perhaps the circumstances that brought him to a temporary repose should not have been so dire. Was that even possible? He imagined Heimdall on one of Stark's pleasure-visits to tropical climates, drinking out of the shell of a tree nut. 

Steven attended Frigga, acting as a second pair of hands while she practiced arts old even for Asgard. There were philters and potions aplenty and Steven assisted the Allmother with no sign that he felt the work was beneath him. Humble as the flowers no longer on his breast.  

Frigga had noted their absence with the barest frown. 

Thor had retrieved the flattened blooms from the floor of Steven’s room. They rested in his own quarters, pressed between the pages of a heavy tome. 

Now, Steven was intent on assisting. He had pressed for ways to be of use over breakfast, clearly chafing under the rhythm of the court. In contrast, Barnes seemed perfectly comfortable, had accepted his division from Steven with apparent grace. It remained to be seen if that grace would hold out. 

Thor’s mother brought her hand back from Heimdall’s brow and looked expectant. She smiled with satisfaction as Heimdall’s eyes fluttered open.  

“My lady,” he began, blinking sleepily at the Queen. His voice was even lower than usual; its edges like rocks grinding together.  

“Hush. You need not practice your courtly airs from a bed of rest.” 

“When else would I have the opportunity?” he rumbled. 

She rolled her eyes, unimpressed. “When you are _ready_ ,” she emphasized, “My son will have questions.” 

“He should introduce me to the Hero of Midgard first,” Heimdall opined, pushing himself up, accepting a goblet of Idunn’s mead. As he swallowed, Thor smelled summer. 

“It’s an honor, sir.” Steven held out his hand to the sentry.  

“I have seen you many times, upon my Prince’s request,” Heimdall responded, grasping Steven’s arm. His hand dwarfed Steven’s wrist: how interesting it was for him to seem small. “It is reassuring to know you can smile.” 

Steven’s formal politeness faltered. “I—” he began. 

“Perhaps you  _should_ practice your manners,” the Allmother said, refilling the goblet and pressing it back into Heimdall’s hands. As he dutifully swallowed, her tone softened. “Your mothers would be quite ashamed.” 

“Who attacked you?” Thor could stall the question no longer. 

Heimdall shook his head. “I could not see."  

“How is that possible?” Thor demanded, before taking a deep breath to calm himself at his mother’s raised eyebrow. 

“My sight can be impaired only by great magic. My lady could do it, or your brother, were he free. Precious few others.” He blinked golden eyes. “I thought I heard footsteps, a voice, just before, but...” He frowned. “Now I believe it may have been trickery.” 

“Why?” Steven asked. 

“They sounded like Loki’s steps, his laughter at my back,” the sentry said quietly, avoiding the Queen's gaze. 

Thor felt his jaw clench. "Trickery indeed." 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content Notes:  
> \- Bucky uses some foul language, mostly as intensifiers and references to sex; this includes some sex-negative language in reference to Thor allowing the other Asgardians to tease Steve  
> \- Bucky remembers being slightly inebriated the night before and watching Steve sleep: Steve is still not aware this is happening and has not consented  
> \- Bucky compares the previous evening to coming home after drinks with friends and feeling like he had license to touch Steve when they lived in Brooklyn  
> \- Bucky refers to his brainwashing and dehumanization in a passing way; he also refers to the after-effects of his trauma at Azzano, including physical pain and a combined fear of / inability to sleep  
> \- Bucky imagines / remembers consensual BDSM play with Steve and Peggy; there is one reference to violent breathplay and several references to switching; later, Sif and Fandral joke about rope-play and bondage in general  
> \- Volstagg and Hogun are wrestling; Bucky is invited to join and his disability is discussed  
> \- Bucky thinks he remembers seriously injuring a young Natasha and killing several of the girls in the Widow program; he compares their faces to his sister's  
> \- Bucky makes a pass at Fandral (it's not clear how serious he is) and the Asgardians discuss Steve and Jane's respective interest in sex very casually, which upsets Bucky; they continue to refer to Steve much more as a sexual object than a person with agency. It's unclear to what degree they actually think this way compared to the possibility that they are intentionally annoying Bucky.  
> \- Hunting for sport gets brought up and Bucky expresses interest in being violent rather than continuing to talk  
> \- There is some non-explicit reference to medical treatment


	16. Anomalies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Unplanned interviews; Loki is annoyed and Steve gets a close look at the guardian of the gods.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's time for our update! Both Steve and Thor have some illuminating discussions while Bucky is off scaring local wildlife.
> 
> Now, next week's update *may* be delayed. I'm doing some redrafting in light of some really helpful advice from the folks at the Marvel Creator's Network Discord. My sincere thanks to those folks for their time and patience!
> 
> Comment and kudos are the best. Please consider leaving some! Thanks for reading!
> 
> Content Notes at the end!

He left Heimdall to his convalescence: drinking Idunn’s mead and being attended by the Allmother, he was in no danger. And Thor would not bring Steven to this conference.  

Thor had not expected to return to the bowels of the palace so quickly. His footsteps echoed in the dungeon and prisoners turned to observe his passage. Some jeered, but it was of no matter, like the shrieking of birds. 

“Was it you?” he demanded, planting himself outside Loki’s cell. 

“My dear brother, you’ll have to be more specific,” Loki drawled, not getting up from his settee. A languid hand indicated the bespelled glass between them. “If we are to rely on your meager conversational skills, this may take some time. Having had to tolerate you once already today, my stores of patience are sorely limited.” 

“You told me you were not involved in Heimdall’s attack,” Thor said, blushing at his credulity. 

Loki looked slightly more interested. “Someone has claimed otherwise?” 

“Heimdall has awoken and he heard what sounded like your steps, your laughter prior to the attack.” 

“That’s precious little to go on, even for you,” Loki observed. “And did Heimdall believe these footsteps and amusement were indeed mine?” 

“No,” Thor said. “Merely that he heard them, heard what sounded like your voice. Heimdall is not one to draw conclusions lightly.” 

“You should follow his example, brother.” Loki picked at a goblet of jeweled red seeds, bringing a few to his lips and chewing unconcernedly. He swallowed delicately before continuing. “Oh, and do bring your Captain next time, if he’s not too busy masquerading as our brother. There’s some menial labor I need done and the servants are so loathe to join me in my parlor. I believe he’s  _slightly_ less clumsy than you are?” 

Thor stared at his brother, who rolled his eyes. 

“Oh, and I can critique his performance, if you and Mother like. I was barely your junior in age when Baldr died and your superior by far in the art of observation. If he really wants to ape Father’s first favorite, he should seek my counsel.” Loki held out the goblet of glistening seeds. “May I tempt you, brother?” 

“You are deliberately being obtuse.” 

His brother snorted delicately. “A fine claim coming from you, of all people. I’m sure the Lady Casiolena would agree with me. Perhaps you should ask her for confirmation: her harridan shrieks have gone quiet recently. I do so miss the cacophony.” 

“Brother, I—” 

“Enough. I can bear you no longer. If you have a fancy of seeing me executed, do indeed pass your suspicions on to Father.” Loki said and turned away from him, taking up a book. His long fingers clenched the tome, making indentations in the soft leather. 

Thor stared at his brother’s back, the inelegant hunch of his shoulders so unlike him, despite his professed unconcern.  

He decided to look upon Casiolena’s cell. Her prison was far less comfortable than his brother’s: she slept huddled upon a rough cot, facing the wall. She was clad in a rough smock, a far cry from the beautiful silks she had worn as the queen of her pocket nether-realm.  

She had been in custody for years: a guard shrugged in response to his questioning. Apparently, the former queen spent much of her time sleeping of late; she had eventually run out of invective some years before, when none of her usual vassals attempted to free her. The time since had chastened her further. She ignored him as he called her name, only hunching smaller in the rough cot. 

A sad image: the woman had been a beauty and a skilled mage, despite the uses to which she put those qualities. Without their mother’s favor, would Loki lie like that, curled up with only his defiance to soften his bed? Might he yet lie so?  

Thor left the prison, glad his brother could not see these thoughts. Above all, Loki hated being pitied; perhaps most of all when he fought to keep from pitying himself. 

* * *

Steve busied himself helping Frigga: his perfect recall meant he was a useful helper as she dosed the huge man resting in the bed. Heimdall: Thor had spoken of him many times with a combination of awe and affection, rooted in a trust that was unshakable.  

Steve had heard stories about growing up under the close watch of Odin and Frigga, the eyes of the court. Heimdall had been a contrast to anyone else in Asgard: always nearby, but always a little distant, eyes elsewhere, set on his task of guarding the realm. He hadn't wanted anything from the children who crept into his observatory, hadn't expected anything from them except their curiosity about what he could see. 

A few times, lying across Thor's broad chest, Steve had thought it sounded like boyhood crush, but it had been something else, too. Relief at someone whose respect couldn't be bought, whose patience was the same for princes as it was for the servants who brought him the mead he lived on.  

When Heimdall had reported the last things he had heard—the sound, real or falsified, of Loki’s footsteps, his voice—Thor had thanked Heimdall for his help, promised to return soon, and left the room with stiff shoulders. 

Frigga continued to tease Heimdall before pronouncing him as well as could be expected, given the circumstances. He was prescribed more of the drink that smelled like the Platonic ideal of an apple pie and then she asked Steve to keep him company while she went to consult with Odin. 

Steve hoped that meeting went better than their arrival at court had. 

He sat at the bedside and watched Heimdall drink the mead. He had no idea if he was supposed to make conversation. It was easy to imagine being a brat from the surrounding city, sneaking into the observatory, dragged along by Bucky only to be spooked by the giant with the golden eyes. 

“So, Hero of Midgard,” Heimdall pronounced. “I suspect you are curious how your other companions fare, back on your world.” 

“You don’t have to check,” Steve protested. “You just woke up.” 

Heimdall shrugged. “My watch is my life, Steven Rogers. And given how many times my prince has asked to see you, it is a relief to look upon Midgard to search for another face.” 

Steve blushed. Jesus, what had he  _seen_? It was the man's job to watch: how many times had he seen Steve dither in the grocery store or snore on his couch?  Or worse? It was one thing to be poked at by doctors and SHIELD staff, but Heimdall saw _through_ everything, made everything seem insubstantial under his gaze. “The team, at the Tower?” 

Heimdal blinked great golden eyes. “They have adjusted to your absence, calling upon comrades to renew their numbers. The Widow leads with great competence but she visits your rooms to meditate on how her choices might differ from the ones you would have made.” 

“You can see that?” 

“I have much experience with observing behavior.” 

Steve nodded, wondering if this was how he’d described Steve.  _He jumps from planes and spends much of his time alone. He can_ _not_ _bring himself to listen to music made after 1940 and he does_ _not_ _think you_ _are_ _coming back._ No wonder he was tired of looking at Steve. “Thank-you. May I ask who’s joined them at the Tower?” 

“Your flying companion has joined them, with success. There are others your team has called upon in the past. Hellcat, Ant-Man and the Wasp are among them. More come and go: some rest in your Tower, some do not. The Widow creates a network of warriors for you to call upon when you return, to be called upon by in turn, now that your SHIELD is broken asunder.” 

“Wow.” Steve smiled. They were doing  _fine_ without him. Natasha was already reorganizing the Avengers to be a more effective force in the world, because  _of_ _course_ she was. “Glad to hear it. Do they know what happened to us?” 

“Jane Foster is among them, studying lingering effects of the Bifrost on the Tower: there are anomalies, due to the violence of the crossing. Your quarters sustain damage from both the battle and the manifestation of the bridge. I apologize for my part in it.” Heimdall blinked. His eyes were like the sky far, far out of the city: there were webs of light there, far away. “They have, however, reached a relatively accurate interpretation of events.” 

“Thank-you,” Steve said. “Is there anything I should know?” 

Heimdall smiled: it was a slow, subtle movement. “A much more difficult question to answer.”  He sipped his mead.

Steve supposed he deserved that. “One more look?” he asked, his mouth suddenly dry. “Peggy. Peggy Carter.” 

Heimdall squinted, looking into the middle distance. “She fares well, given her illness. Her descendants visit and on good days, she receives them like a queen.” 

“Thank-you,” Steve whispered.  

“Already you have shown me a much wider swath of humanity than my Prince,” the huge man said, still smiling. 

Right. Thor had asked after him enough to leave an impression, probably an indelible one of microwavable meals and sweaty nightmares. But that twigged something in Steve’s head. 

“Can I ask one more thing?” 

“Yes.” 

Steve scratched the back of his neck. “Thor didn’t know I’d gone to Washington. You said he asked about me, that you checked. You didn’t tell him?” 

There was a pause before Heimdall answered. “The Prince was needed here and it would have pained him to know of your isolation when he could not return to you.” 

“But you told him after I went in the river.” 

“It was arrogance to withhold his choice from him,” Heimdall said and for a moment, the serene expression broke. Eyes that saw galaxies spinning narrowed. 

“Your arrogance or someone else’s?” 

“Both,” Heimdall said heavily. “May I make a suggestion to you, Steven Rogers?” 

Steve nodded. Did you trust advice from someone who essentially told you not to trust them? You listened, at least. Fury all over again. 

“Find a way to communicate with the Prince when duty forces you apart, one that brooks no interference.”  

“Thank-you,” Steve said, watching Heimdall. Smears of grey in the great locks of hair, deep-set wrinkles around the eyes. A drawing of him would need to convey the weight of years, the page would need to feel heavy in the hand. “Really.” 

“And now, Steven, I must ask you to leave me to my rest,” Heimdall pronounced. 

“Sorry, sir, but the Queen told me to stay with you until she came back,” Steve said. “We don’t have to talk, but I’m staying here.” Steve settled back in the chair. 

Heimdall nodded. “Forgive me if I close my eyes, then. You could indulge an old sentry with the tale of your time in Asgard.” 

“Sure thing. First thing I did when I got here? Threw up.” 

A low chuckle from the man in the bed. “As I said, you have my apologies for the circumstances of your travel.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content Notes:  
> \- There are some non-explicit references to medical care and illness  
> \- Thor and Loki's conversation takes place in Asgard's prison: they are both upset  
> \- Loki refers to Baldr's death, which took place when Loki and Thor were both very young  
> \- Loki sarcastically invites Thor to accuse him and thereby encourage Odin to execute him  
> \- Loki references another prisoner, Casiolena, using some sexist language; he also insults Thor and Steve, primarily on the basis of intelligence  
> \- Thor reflects on Casiolena, who is in a much less seemingly comfortable cell than Loki  
> \- Steve is embarrassed upon being reminded that Heimdall has looked in on him many times upon Thor's request; privately, he sarcastically imagines Heimdall reporting Steve's depression, PTSD, and lack of self-care  
> \- Steve refers to his injury and fall in the river in CA:TWS  
> \- Heimdall obliquely refers to Peggy's illness


	17. Probably a Cultural Thing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve meets up with the hunters and takes some steam.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi all! Trefoil is back with weekly updates. This week's chapter is the first half of what was originally one giant chapter. See how Asgardians handle a spa day.
> 
> Thanks for reading! Please do consider leaving comments and kudos! Content Notes at the end.

Bucky had a mask of dried blood on his face and looked thoroughly pleased about it. He waved off the attentions of a woman who hovered around him, dabbing at his face with a cloth. Behind him, other servants hurried to attend to Sif and the Warriors Three around the over-sized baths. The heat made the fabric of Steve’s outfit cling to his skin.  

“She’s just trying to clean you up, Buck,” he chided. “Sorry, miss. Could I have that, please?” he asked, gesturing at the cloth. 

The woman looked confused, but relieved. She handed him the cloth and a bowl of water, curtsied, and hurried away. 

“C’mere, Buck,” he said, shifting closer on the bench. “You can’t walk around like that.” 

Bucky rolled his eyes, but he let Steve wipe off the dried blood. He closed his eyes; he might have looked vulnerable if he wasn’t smirking in the steamy air. Instead he looked like a cat scratching its jaw on a chair-leg, fierce and smug. He’d stripped down to the under-tunic, which was blood-stained enough that the outer shirt must have been as drenched as the stiff leggings were. Steve rinsed the cloth, letting filaments of blood spin in the water. He started on Bucky’s neck, taking long, careful swipes. Bucky looked pleased at the attention, so soon after dodging the attendant; it was tempting to dunk him in one of the tubs.

It was, literally, world’s away from the shower and Steve wasn’t sure how he felt about that.

“He may well be proud of himself,” Fandral announced from the huge bath, lounging across from Volstagg. The baths, at different temperatures—one cold, one tepid, one hot—took up half the huge room: they made the tubs at the Tower look like the tin bath Steve’d been scrubbed in as a kid. Volstagg’s broad back—almost Hulk-size—was so thickly freckled he looked tanned.  Fandral looked past Volstagg, grinning at Steve. “Your friend took to the javelin quite well and slew a monstrous boar. Sif dressed it in the field. I believe it’s being prepared for a roast.”  

After being dismissed by Frigga earlier, Steve had been led by a servant into the steaming suite of rooms. Really, they were just a fancier version of camp showers. ...Admittedly,  _much_ fancier.  Hogun and Sif were each being massaged and the woman who had been trying to clean the blood off Bucky’s face was one of a dozen servants attending to the hunters, flitting through the steam like helpful ghosts. 

“No, thank-you,” Steve said, to a young man offering him mead. Steve tried to clean the cloth as best he could now, rinsing it in the water and trying to ignore the way his clothes stuck to him. Bucky winked at him, accepting the drink Steve had turned down. 

“You killed a boar with a javelin?” Some of the Howlies had trapped what little food they could out in the field during the war, but Bucky had never had much interest in it. He’d said he’d rather shoot Nazis than squirrels. He’d eaten whatever Dernier had managed to snare, though, just like the rest of them. 

“Dagger,” Hogun said, with rare inflection of pleasure in his voice. Must have been a talented masseuse working on him. 

Fandral added for Steve’s benefit: “A true hunter corners the beast and faces it directly. Your friend is quite modest about his capabilities: his injury barely impedes him.” 

Well, that sounded like an incredibly stupid idea and a quick way to get gored, but it was probably a cultural thing. Bucky looked uninjured and—happy. It was good to see, even if Steve had never understood hunting for sport. Much less hunting for sport in Asgard: he’d seen Thor’s scars. There was one on his thigh that Steve had been nervous to touch, at first. It was an old wound, longer than Steve’s hand.  

“I think their boars might have extra tusks,” Bucky said cheerfully. “Not that I’d fuckin’ know.” 

“You wouldn’t,” Steve agreed. “You sure they’re not humoring you and you actually bagged someone’s pet pig?” 

Sif sighed gustily and spoke, sounding a little sleepy as the servant massaged her lower back. “And you, Captain: you were aiding the Queen while we took to the hunt?” She was naked, except for a cloth draped over her hips. Oil glistened on the muscles of her back. Steve’s gaze swiveled to the ceiling, where steam played against the tiles.

“Thor never mentioned you practiced the healer’s art,” Fandral said slyly. He spread his arms, leaning back on the edge of the bath. Steam rose from his skin and he gestured at Steve. “Come, you must be tired from your exertions attending the wounded. First, Heimdall, and now, Barnes. Join us!” He grinned, eyes bright. 

No stranger to being teased, Steve shook his head. “I’m fresh enough,” he said. It was a lie. 

“Well, I did wrestle with a giant pig today. Suppose I could use a wash,” Bucky said. He tossed back the remainder of the glass and started to pull off his clothes. The under-tunic fell to the floor and Bucky started to unlace his pants. Steve found himself looking at the ceiling again. 

“Hardly wrestled,” Volstagg said, slurping mead. “You stabbed the beast quite efficiently.” 

“Nah, I meant you,” Bucky said smoothly, and they all guffawed; Volstagg laughed the loudest of all. Steve kept his eyes on the ceiling until he heard Bucky clamber into the tub and someone—Volstagg?—slap him on the back. When he looked, Bucky was sitting between Fandral and Volstagg, amiably fending off another buffet from Volstagg’s huge arms; there was still plenty of room between them when the giant warrior sank back in the bath.  

Bucky’s discarded clothes were stiff and bloody on the floor. Before Steve could reach for them, a servant gathered them up.

“Still trying to pick up after me, Rogers?” He winked when Steve met his eyes and knocked back the drink. Facing Steve, he wet his hand and scrubbed at his hair, combing it out and raking it back from his face. It hadn’t been cut since before the helicarrier but the water kept it slicked back, revealing the sharp planes of his face. His shoulder was sharply abbreviated: just the socket remained, surrounded by scars.

It was the first time Steve had seen him uncovered since the shower. His cheeks were scrubbed clean now, pink from the steam.  

“Captain: tell us. How do you take your exercise on Midgard? Barnes says hunting is out of fashion in your world,” Fandral asked. He watched Bucky preen, even as his question was directed at Steve. 

“Depends where you are.” Steve tilted his head and thought. He knew that staying out of the baths, not taking a drink, not telling a servant to rub him down were all marking him as an outsider: he wasn’t using the space right. And it really was too hot to be fully dressed: the servants couldn’t be comfortable. But now that he found himself on the sidelines, he didn’t want to bow and scrape to be allowed in, wanted to dig in his heels the more they reached out. Honestly, it wasn’t so different from the way things had been before the serum: sitting off to the side, watching Bucky charm a room and waving off his invitations to join in. 

He wasn’t flirting so much today. That might change, given the grin with which he accepted another glass of mead. 

Steve realized he hadn’t answered the real question, not that Fandral seemed to mind. He was still watching Bucky. “I run, I box, and I spar, if I’ve got someone around who's up for it.” 

Volstagg turned to look at him. “Surely you can trounce any of your Midgardian fellows: why practice against them?” 

Steve shook his head. “If it’s just wrestling with no equipment, I do okay, but everyone uses equipment, except Bruce. Natasha’s a dab hand with a garrote and her Widow’s Bites. If Clint took me by surprise with the right arrow...” he shrugged. “There’s only so much you can practice for safely, but it helps keep you sharp.” 

“Ah, yes, your Widow and the archer: Thor speaks very highly of them both. And your armored mage, the garrulous one. Bruce must be your great green monster? A most colorful company.” Fandral observed. “What of you and Barnes? Is he a match for you when—ahem—properly armed?” 

The helicarrier. Bucky denying he knew him, busting up his face. And then the fall. 

Steve nodded. “Absolutely,” he said quietly. He didn’t look at Bucky. The floor was intricately tiled; he let his eyes trace the patterns, listening to the others' voices. 

“You must join us tomorrow,” Volstagg insisted. “Barnes would only give me but one bout; he blames his injury, which I find highly suspicious, given his display in the woods.” 

He heard Bucky clear his throat. “How about this: if Steve’s not busy playing candy striper, he’ll join the sparring and I’ll handle the hunts.” Steve looked up to see him drain his drink and wipe his mouth. “That way we both get some time to recover and we stay entertaining.” 

“That sounds fair,” Fandral said, stroking his mustache. “Captain, do you know when Thor is due to return? We expected him back by now.” 

“Well,” Steve began, before he heard heavy footsteps and all the servants present hastily began to bow or curtsy. 

“There you are!” Fandral said. “Thor, do us a favor and deposit your man in the bath: he looks positively half-melted in those clothes.” He paused, looking past Steve. “On second thought, have a drink first. You look _wretched_.” 

Steve turned to look, feeling the air get heavy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content Notes:  
> \- Multiple references are made to blood and the hunting of animals for food and for sport on Midgard and Asgard; the characters make direct references to particular hunting strategies, which may seem cruel. If you're sensitive to the topic of animals being hurt, you may want to skip this one.  
> \- Bucky's face and clothes are quite bloody as well; Steve remembers him comparing hunting animals to killing Nazis  
> \- Bucky begins drinking rather heavily  
> \- Scars and injuries are discussed (Bucky's, Thor's and Steve's)  
> \- Steve is uncomfortably attracted to Bucky and Sif  
> \- Bucky makes a fat joke about Volstagg, who seems to find it funny


	18. Detente

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> More bath-time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please enjoy the second half of what counts as a pleasant interlude in this fic. Thanks for reading!
> 
> Content Notes at the End!

Steve turned to see Thor looking grave. Earlier, Heimdall’s news had sent Thor to visit his brother and the resulting conversation had left him with narrowed eyes. Thor took a goblet offered by a servant—the same woman who had been trying to wrangle Bucky earlier—and scowled at it. 

“Forgotten how to swallow, have we?” Fandral asked, beckoning the woman forward to refill their glasses. “Captain, what have you been doing—or failing to do—to our prince?” Another round of laughter.

Thor shrugged and downed the glass, waving off the exhortations to join the bathers. His scowl softened. He turned to Steve, clapping his free hand on his shoulder “Will you join?” 

Steve hesitated. Staying put wasn’t exactly a moral victory. 

“Thor Odinson, if you don’t get in the damned tub, we’ll drop you in like your mother did the summer you refused to bathe,” Sif drawled. 

“Better call his ma,” Bucky said, his voice carrying through the steam.

Thor rolled his eyes, looking pleased. Their teasing put him at ease, at least, even Bucky’s contributions. He rubbed Steve’s shoulder, looking past him even as thick fingers sought out the solidity of muscle and bone. “I was but a child,” he protested. 

“You were already growing your beard,” Fandral insisted, gesturing with a large glass. “Though that _did_ start early. One more chance, then Volstagg will put you over his shoulder.”

“Why do I have to do it?” 

“Because you are surprisingly fast, given you’ve the breadth of a barn.” 

Thor grinned and let go of Steve to start stripping. “If only to spare us all the sight of Volstagg exiting the bath, at least. I acquiesce.” He handed his clothing to a servant who had appeared at his shoulder. Steve looked at the tiles again, feeling ridiculous. 

“Do divest the Captain of his clothes as well. You’re the only one of us that can.” 

“Might let Sif do it,” Bucky muttered into his drink, to dirty whistles. He met Steve’s eye and winked as Thor sank into the bath. They were all watching, now, lazy and amused. For a moment, he was a skinny kid again, looking through art books at the library and being brought up short by someone’s optimistic imagining of a Turkish bath scene. Red-cheeked, hastily turning the page only to peek back and learn about Gérôme and skin you thought you could reach out and touch.

Volstagg slapped Bucky on the back again, still chuckling. Stubbornness stiffened Steve’s spine and he considered the door.

“Steven,” Thor called, a little plaintive under the happy bluster. “Will you join us if we swear to soak Fandral’s head any time he teases you?” 

“Now, that’s hardly fair—”

“I’ll do it,” Volstagg said. “I am _surprisingly_ fast.” 

“C’mon Stevie,” Bucky said doggedly. Was he drunk? “If you drop your drawers quick, Sif and Hogun won’t see.” 

“A tragic compromise, but one I am willing to make, if it shuts you all up.”

Fandral pouted. “Why not soak Barnes as well, if he won’t respect his Captain?” 

“The man might rust,” Volstagg replied. “Is there more of you that’s been replaced by metal?” 

“You feel free to check, big man.” 

Steve sighed and took off the Asgardian clothes. He folded them on his chair, undressing efficiently, but not rushing. He’d spent too many hours being poked and prodded by scientists and razzed by the Howlies—and years living with Tony, what a thought—to actually be embarrassed if anyone was looking. It did feel better to have the sodden material off his skin. He kept his eyes down, though. At least in the USO, he’d had a script to recite while the audience got an eyeful of chorus girls and pitched vegetables. During the endless testing after the serum, the doctors had always had sets of instructions. It was easy to imagine Fandral with a bag of popcorn, Hogun with a clipboard and a stop-watch. 

His shield lay on a shelf, moisture running down its grooves. Thor had set Mjölnir beside it and her surface seemed to start to sweat.

Thor and Bucky were getting along, though. They were sitting next to each other and no-one had been injured so far: it was the second time, too. He’d seem them talking the day before, on the ride. They’d looked almost furtive, like they weren’t supposed to be seen getting along. Today was different: at the end of a long day of chasing quarry, now surrounded by good-natured shoving and teasing, they seemed to have achieved a kind of detente. If he could just stop getting between them, maybe they could build on it, actually get to know each other.

Steve circled the bath before climbing in, sitting in the widest remaining gap: the one between Volstagg and Fandral on the far side. The water was painfully hot as he sat on the interior bench, and he wished he could spend the rest of the visit here, dropping low enough that he just kept his nostrils above the water, pretending to be a sea creature. Or a potato, given the temperature. 

“Is our Captain decent?” Sif asked, yawning. 

“Our Captain? How forward.” Fandral said, setting down his glass. “And here I thought we had made a pact to not to ask to borrow him. For shame, your ladyship.” 

Volstagg pushed himself forward to grab the other Asgardian—Fandral had been right, he _was_ fast for his size—and dunked the smaller man’s head and shoulders beneath the water. He held a struggling Fandral beneath the surface for a few seconds longer than Steve would have liked, smiling in his great beard. Volstagg pulled him back up by the hair, sputtering and red-faced. 

“Let that be a lesson to you,” Volstagg said cheerfully and retook his seat. 

Steve wondered if he should thank him. He settled for nodding at Volstagg, who waved away the acknowledgment. 

“He’ll never learn, otherwise.”

“He’ll never learn,” Thor amended, draining his glass of mead, and cheerfully tossing it behind his shoulder. There was a sound of shattering glass and a servant hurried over. Steve wanted to be annoyed at the waste, but Thor's grin was so earnest, so wide. 

 _When in Asgard_ , he thought.

“I was just cautioning Sif to be respectful,” Fandral insisted amidst the laughter and the scrape of glass on stone. 

“Make another comment on anyone’s etiquette and you’ll get another ducking.” 

“Well, the view beneath the surface _was_ enjoyable—no, no, that’s not necessary,” he added quickly, as Volstagg planted a meaty hand on the side of the bath to hoist himself up. 

“Someone cover the Captain’s eyes,” Sif announced, “I’m coming in.” 

Steve sank lower into the bath, blushing furiously. Being razzed was one thing, but Peggy had never joined the Howlies in the showers, never taken off her smart uniform and left it in the lockers to parade through the steam. 

 _Jesus, what a thought_.

Steve’s dick responded with characteristic enthusiasm and he tried not to shift too obviously. Bucky saw and winked again. He nudged Thor and muttered something lost in the wet air. Thor looked doubtful, but then he looked at Steve. Thor's eyes softened and for a moment the two of them both just looked at Steve and laughed—Thor guffawing, Bucky snickering—and thank Christ, they didn’t share the joke with the rest of the class. Not yet, anyway.

The sight of them sitting there made his heart twist in his chest: all the stiffness was out of Thor’s wide shoulders as he bellowed for Hogun to join them. Bucky’s hair was curling in the humidity and he wasn't checking the exits as frequently as he might otherwise. It was a picture.

Sif levered herself up into the bath, tall and unconcerned and beautiful, and she shoved Fandral closer to Steve. 

He had to talk to them later, about all of it, all the things he’d been putting off saying, but for now, it could be inconsequential and public and easy as the slop of water over the side of the bath.

Steve took the drink when Fandral waved a servant over, thanking the woman and rolling his eyes at the sound of breaking glass.

* * *

Steve’s stomach started to rumble. Eating in the bath—especially a bath the size of a swimming pool—was too goddamn decadent, so he heaved himself out of the tub. Accompanied by whistles and jeers, he pushed his way through the steam to the bench where he’d left his clothes. If he was a little unsteady on his feet, it was fine. If he was very unsteady on his feet, then so much the better. Thor could catch him and Bucky could tease him for being a light-weight again. Except it wasn't supposed to happen like that, not the way he wanted it to, and Steve had to tell them. Steve belched and coughed; he hadn't missed that part.

He felt almost _normal_ , here. There were plenty of Asgardians his size or bigger and they all ate like champions. He could get drunk. _Real_ drunk, apparently. There were soldiers all over. If he wasn't about to get dressed up like Thor's dead brother again, he might have just been another guy getting razzed in the showers. 

The clothes were folded differently than how he’d left them: maybe his folding wasn’t up to snuff. On top of the pile was a green sprig with rounded leaves and white berries. The tip was sharpened to a point, like a dart. He stared at it, too inured from all the teasing—and a few glasses of the mead, which hit like a truck—to give a damn that he wasn’t immediately dressing. 

“Whatcha got there, Steve?” Bucky called over the general noise, dangling his arm over the lip of the tub.  He looked like he could just tip out onto the floor.

“Some kinda plant,” Steve said, looking back at the greenery to pick it up. He held it up to his nose, so there'd be less steam in the way. The contrast between the green stem and the berries was pretty, like having a classic botanical study in your hand. 

“Mistletoe, I think,” he said, trying to figure out why that sounded familiar.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content Notes:  
> \- Thor makes a joke about Volstagg that could be interpreted as fatphobic; there is a lot of teasing in general  
> \- Steve has a sexually charged thought about Peggy  
> \- Bucky quickly gets drunk; later Steve is quite inebriated and as a result fails to interpret a symbolic threat


	19. Upstart

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No-one likes getting out of the bath, even in Asgard.
> 
> Content Notes at the end! Chapter Count has gone up: this should be the final change! Thanks for reading!

The water slowed him as he clawed out of the goddamn tub and slapped the dart out of the Captain’s hand. The Alien, responsible for about two-thirds of the water that had warped his balance, was right behind him. The giant grabbed the Captain to examine his hands. 

The Soldier scowled, drunker than he’d realized in the tub. How could he be soused when he had a mission objective? There was a feeling that was nausea, and he bent, gripping a shelf. His arm was missing, but the Captain wasn’t the kind of handler to take it off without good reason.

“What in Muspelheim are you—” the freckled giant began, turning in the bath.   

“What? What’s going on?” The Captain demanded, looking from the Soldier to the Alien, who still hadn’t let go of his hands. The Captain was drunk and pink to his navel. But maybe not as drunk as the Soldier. 

“Mistletoe,” the Soldier confirmed, trying not to stare at how the Alien’s hands circled the Captain’s wrists, made them look small.

“I thought that was just a story—Thor?” The Captain demanded; despite his tone, his hands were gentle as he removed himself from the Alien’s grip. It wouldn’t be so bad going under if those were the hands that put him down.  

“No injuries,” the Alien announced. “Barnes, take this cloth. Get the dart. Don’t touch it.”  

The Soldier obeyed, even though that wasn’t his name, even though he’d already scraped himself on the point. Like it or not, the Alien had rank here. He gripped the cloth and picked up the twig.

“Bucky,” the Captain said. He sounded upset. “Bucky?” 

Another name that wasn’t his. He stood holding the dart out for inspection. The Alien took it.  

“Bucky.” The Captain’s hands were on his face, searching like the eyes were. Blue, insistent blue. His fingers should have been iron bands around the Soldier’s face, holding him still for maintenance, but they were unbearably kind. “Are you with me?”

“Steve?” he asked, then the world stuttered. “Steve,” he repeated, and this time it wasn’t just a word pulled from his brain. All the Soldier’s certainty was draining away, leaving something weak and grasping. 

“Bucky, your hand.” Steve held Bucky’s palm up to the light. The scrape was already healing: the cut was part of the line of the palm. “Thor, can we get this checked out?” 

 “I’ll call a healer.” The big man strode toward a servant and barked an order, unselfconscious and authoritative.  

Steve guided Bucky toward a bench, putting a towel around his hips before easing him to a sitting position. 

“You with me?” 

Bucky nodded, blinking at the sight: Steve, naked, kneeling in front of him. Steve was looking up into his eyes, resting a hand on his cheek. Thumb on his cheekbone, fingers cradling his neck and jaw. Hadn’t seen that, felt that in years, not since he was another person entirely. 

Steve shook his head. “I need to hear you, Buck. Tell me what’s going on.” 

His tongue was heavy. “Fine. ‘m fine, Steve.” He rubbed his aching temple. “Jesus. Put some clothes on: you’re distracting the public.” 

If Steve could blush, smile, maybe he’d lose that look in his eyes. “Jerk,” he said. 

There was a word on his lips. There wasn’t a word; there was just a gap.

Steve’s smile hesitated, and he looked away.  

Bucky closed his eyes. 

He tried to think of the word that would make Steve happy. 

Someone looked over his hand: if he tilted his head back, it was like routine maintenance.  

* * *

Steven nodded irritably as a servant explained that different clothes would need to be fetched while his previous garments were looked over. Thor shrugged on his own garments, looking at the swaddled branch where he had left it.

“It’s your home, and it’s your show,” Steven murmured, adjusting the towel on his hips. He’d covered Barnes first, seen to himself only after attendants had begun to buzz around the other man. “But I think it’s time Bucky and I start helping figure out what’s going on.”

A pang of reluctance as he pulled on his trousers. The diversion in the bath had been simple and pleasing, but it was over.

“We can’t stay in the spa forever, Thor.” Steven’s appearance suggested otherwise: still damp from the bath, fine hair drying at odd angles as if disputing hands had swept through it. Rumpled and sweet.

“I am well aware of that,” he said shortly. This desire to keep Steven like a court decoration shamed them both. “I will arrange a discussion with my father and mother, and their councilors.” A muscle in his jaw twitched and he spoke bluntly. “Your status in Midgard will not confer the right to lead here. You will attend as my guest.” The court fascination his mother had created, the symbols heaped upon Steven would not impact his father’s council, at least not positively. Too many of the older seats would see a grasping, pretty upstart.

Steven smiled lopsidedly.  “See? ’m still practically on vacation.”

...Perhaps Steven would need some time to lessen the effects of the drink. And Barnes needed further consideration. His eyes were flat and unseeing. An automaton at rest, waiting for orders.

Frankly, Thor preferred the sneer. There was someone behind it, at least. This was like a fleshly Destroyer, bereft of its armored limb.

As he finished dressing, Thor turned to see Fandral picking up the dart, unwrapping it carefully. Mistletoe, carved into quickness. A twin to the one Hodr put through their brother’s heart. The one some had insisted Loki had bespelled and handed to blind Hodr, though the youngest prince had been just a boy at the time and the truth so hopelessly complicated. 

Loki had been a sly-eyed, strange boy, popular with the grasping and petty courtiers he already despised. Disliked and distrusted by the firmer hands on the reins of the lower court. Beloved by only a few, two of their number dead by the end of that day.

The dart was a message, of course. But was it an attempt to recall old, hideous gossip, or a warning, or something else entirely? Loki would have known, was he standing there, would have seen the sign and interpreted it correctly. And worse, perhaps he did know. Perhaps he waited in his cell for news of the discovery, already composing the expression of surprise tempered by disdain that would greet Thor when he arrived.

“It doesn’t appear to have been treated with anything,” Fandral observed. “Which tells us nothing. Let the alchemists have it, I suppose.”

“A trusted one,” Volstagg added, standing in his great nakedness. Steam rolled around his shoulders like mountain mist. “Perhaps the Queen?”

“A wretched task for a mother who yet grieves,” Hogun said quietly.

“Nonetheless, her knowledge of plants and subtle arts makes her the best choice.” Sif’s voice was sure. She was already dressed, poised in her hunting leathers. “And if the Queen cannot be trusted, we have greater worries than whether Barnes has just been poisoned.”

“I’ll admit I’m becoming fond of the man. He does seem…subdued.” Fandral watched Barnes, who had no less than three attendants now. Four, if Steven was counted. He did not appear to have heard Sif’s jibe, stiff with the dignity of the drunk. His gaze was trained on Barnes, his eyes a little unfocused.

Steven’s state was easily remedied, or at least masked. Barnes was a separate concern.

“Volstagg,” Thor said, pitching his voice above the noise of the baths. “Steven’s head needs sticking in the cold bath before he dresses. Fandral, Sif. The Allfather will want to take counsel. Go and find out where we are to meet, then one of you will return to us. I will take the dart.” He held out his hand to Fandral.

The missile was weighted with terrible possibility. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content Notes:  
> \- Bucky dissociates at the beginning of the chapter and injures himself on the dart; Sif suggests he may have been poisoned  
> \- Bucky struggles with a headache and further dissociation  
> \- Pretty much everyone is naked or partially dressed  
> \- Bucky and Bucky are still drunk from the Asgardian alcohol;

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Comments and feedback are always welcome! Chapters will be posted on Thursdays, with perhaps some additional posts.
> 
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